Sixteen endemic varieties have been recorded so far in the Cypriot vineyard and who knows what else this uncultivated terroir with the uniqueness of the autorizal vines can hide. Vouni Panagia is the only Cypriot winery that exclusively cultivates native Cypriot varieties. And if someone asks what to distinguish between them, the answer will be rather difficult. It's not just their rarity, but the fact that each of them can be completely unique. Spurtiko for example, with its thin fragile skin (Spurto means explosive in Cypriot) is almost always the variety that gives those wines with the lowest alcohol of all.
Delicate, fragile, difficult to cultivate since if it "stubborn" it can get stuck at 9% potential alcohol content and hardly go higher. It doesn't have many leaves you see and sometimes it is difficult to feed the fruit. It makes up just under 0.2% of the Cypriot vineyard and Andreas Kyriakidis rescued the variety from complex old varietal vineyards before starting to vinify it separately a decade ago. The wine is vinified in stainless steel tanks, with indigenous yeasts and remains in contact with the lees for 8 months.
So it is delicate and elegant as a wine, it has a beautiful aromatic character with pear, apple, lemon and hints of herbs and flowers and in the mouth a wonderful freshness and mineral finish. Fantastic style if one considers where Cyprus is in latitude on the map. I don't know what other story one needs to try something so rare, special, unique, special and full of whimsy.