| Type | Dessert |
|---|---|
| Appellation | Greco di Bianco DOC |
| Grapes | Greco (dried/passito method) |
| Serving temp. | 8-10°C |
| Style | Passito (dried grape) dessert wine |
| Food pairing | Almond pastries; aged cheeses; dried fruit; alone as meditation wine |
The passito expression of the Jelasi Greek Wine is among the most extraordinary dessert wines available through UniqueWines — not in the sense of the most opulent or the most technically ambitious, but in the sense of the most historically significant and the most genuinely irreplicable. It is a wine that has been acknowledged, in these precise terms, as an oenological masterpiece.
The passito style — in which grapes are dried before vinification, concentrating their sugars, aromatics, and flavour compounds — is one of the oldest winemaking techniques in the Mediterranean world, and it is entirely possible that the original ancient Greek settlers who planted the Greco vine at Capo Bruzzano vinified some portion of their harvest in this manner. Certainly the technique is as natural a fit for the Greco grape of Bianco as any winemaking approach could be: the variety's aromatic profile — orange blossom, almonds, varietal honeys, bergamot — is amplified and deepened by the drying process to produce something of remarkable intensity.
The nose of the passito is soft and enticing, with sweet aromatic perfumes of orange blossom trees and flavours of almonds, many varietal honeys, and bergamot — a bouquet of warmth and complexity that reflects both the character of the grape and the specific aromatic richness of the Bianco terroir. The palate delivers a genuine fresh taste — an important distinction, since the best passito wines are not simply sweet but are sweet and fresh simultaneously — with the typical passito sweet backtaste that the finest examples of the style achieve and others merely approximate.
The market data supports the designation of masterpiece in practical terms: passito wines registered an increase in global sales of 11.9% in gross value and 8.5% in volumes in the first half of 2021 alone — a category in significant and accelerating growth. The Jelasi passito, positioned at the historical and qualitative apex of that category, is a wine whose moment has arrived.
Available through UniqueWines in strictly limited quantities. An oenological masterpiece, acknowledged as such.
