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With deadlines looming for issue No. 3 of “Cyprus Gourmet Magazine”, Easter Sunday was a working one, albeit pleasant. With a main feature about getting out and about around the slopes of Troodos, based on Platres and Anogyra to be finished, I had found my photo library short of pictures of the former. So, towards mid-morning as the aromas of neighbours’ rotating souvla were starting to waft across, Mary and I set off upwards, with cameras and notebook. We stopped at the car park in the main street of a sun-dappled but sleepy Platres and tried to discern whether a parking charge should be paid. We decided it should, fed the ticket machine and took a stroll up the street. Nowhere seemed beckoning for a coffee so we decided to drop in on some old friends, who live in an apartment above the house of winemaker Chris Lambouris.
As we returned to the car park, we found an English couple, probably in their seventies, wrestling with the same parking conundrum, but without the necessary two Euro piece. We effected an exchange of coins whilst they told us this is the 24th consecutive year they had come to Cyprus for their holidays. They’ve always loved it, they said, but this year “It is so expensive”.
Our intended coffee hosts, David and Gill Hodges, are also Cyprus devotees. We first met them in 1990, staying at the Forest Park Hotel in Platres when our house was being built. Younger than we are, they only recently retired and settled for good here. As we stopped outside the house, Chris Lambouris spotted us, came out and invited us for coffee. He is the first winemaker I met in Cyprus, in 1990, when we tasted his wines at a Platres restaurant. Then, he made them in a cooled fruit store, in plastic drums, stirring the fermenting grapes with a long four-pronged stick (pictured). Today he is winemaker and adviser to the winery he started, now owned by a Russian family, and has a lot of very modern gear to make the 85,000 bottles produced a year.
“Brits should Stay Put!”
David and Gill Hodges joined us and talked about the many things that go on in Platres, as well as the burning question for many British residents now formalised in this week’s “Go or Stay” debates. David, an exchange dealer for some years is in Ross Pays’ corner supporting the motion that Brits should stay in Cyprus and ride out the currency imbalance and other economic factors. “Because”, he said to me, “I am pretty confident the Pound is going to get back some if not all of its losses against the Euro in the coming year. And where will that put those who cut and run?”
The subject then turned to wine and Chris, well into his sixties but looking as youthful as ever, told me of his current vineyard and winery developments.
“New Wines from Old Vines”
“I have been experimenting with some re-discovered grape varieties, which look promising”, Chris said, and here he paid tribute to the work done by KEO at Malia in the planting and cloning of various old Cyprus grapes. “Yiannouthi is a red grape with medium acidity”, he went on, “and as a varietal or a blender it could be interesting. Then I have planted 2500 of another re-discovered grape, the white Bromara, which makes a light and fruity wine not unlike Xynisteri”.
“I have grubbed out some old vines, mostly Mavro, but I think Mavro can be used effectively in the winery. My staple red is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Mavro and 20% Grenache.”
Another Lambouris innovation also uses Mavro, but for a dry and a medium dry white wine he calls “Ambelissimo”. Here, the red grapes are pressed, the juice runs clear and the skins are discarded. The juice is then fermented to produce a white wine. This interesting wine sells at the modest price of €4.00.
Chris produces a number of popular wines, the most sought after being his Rosé, now almost out of stock. And then, for the past several years the winery has been making Kosher wines (to do this, special equipment is required and religious regulations apply, plus the attendance of a Rabbi at every stage of the winemaking and bottling process – he alone can “pull the levers”). 14,000 bottles a year go to the Synagogue in Larnaca and to Jewish communities in Hungary, Poland and New York.
Alas, we had to push on and decline Chris and his charming and hospitable wife Lenia’s invitation to Easter Souvla. We had an appointment with a Chocolate King.
