Discover Papargyriou Winery
Our family’s winery and vineyards lie near the village of Lalioti, Corinthia, 120km to the west of Athens. Aristidis Papargyriou, who studied agriculture at the Agricultural University of Athens, planted the first vineyards in 1978, with the goal to produce wines of excellent quality and a distinctive character. At this time, the quality of the Greek wine was mediocre at best, so his model were the great Rieslings from Alcace and Germany, also the Barolos from Piedmont and the Bordeaux wines. He chose varieties with high potential like Assyrtiko, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Agiorgitiko. In the early ‘80s he tasted in Patras the local Muscat in a dry version and decided to cultivate it in Corinthia. This variety was going to be a major success, serving as the main grape for our most popular wine, Papargyriou Blanc. After a period of transition, in the early ‘90s the first bottles of Papargyriou wine started to appear in the market. The two children of the family, son Jannis and daughter Elpida, studied also viticulture in Athens and went for a post-graduate study to Germany, at the famous wine institute of Geisenheim. After his return in 1997, Jannis pushed every year the quality envelope, gradually bringing the winery to the front. Then, in the summer of 2000, a fire destroyed a great part of the vineyards. Our family reacted by choosing a new site at Sofiana, Corinthia, at 900m. altitude, where we acquired about 16 hectars of land ( today 4 of them have been planted with vines). This splendid terroir gave us the opportunity to get better grapes of excellent quality. Today, the production has risen to 42-45000 bottles and the wines are being exported to Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the UK and the United States.