Cyprus has grapes that grow almost nowhere else.
Xynisteri, Mavro, Maratheftiko, Promara, Yiannoudin. Most wine lists on the island skip straight past them.
The good bottles never had a chance to reach you.
The interesting Cypriot wine is made in small quantities by a handful of growers in the mountains. It rarely leaves the island, it is not in most supermarkets, and it is not on most hotel wine lists.
So if you live here and think Cypriot wine is nothing special, or you are visiting and have only met the sweet stuff at the airport, that is a supply problem, not a taste problem.
You do not need to know any grape names to try one. Ask for the Cypriot bottle and we will pour whichever fits what you ordered.
Five names you will not see anywhere else.
Xynisteri is the white one — the island’s main white grape, roughly a third of everything planted, and it makes light, dry, citrus-and-herb wine.
Mavro is the red one, and by a distance the most planted variety on the island. Its name means black. It has spent a century being grown for quantity, and only a few growers ask anything more of it.
Maratheftiko — also called Vamvakada — is the serious red: low-yielding, difficult to grow because of how it flowers, and planted by very few people. It is what turns a Cypriot rosé from pleasant into distinctive.
Promara and Yiannoudin are rarer still, and are being replanted by a small number of estates that decided they were worth saving.
The answer is: further up.
Cyprus is hot, and heat on its own makes soft, flat wine. What rescues it is altitude. The Troodos range runs through the middle of the island and the vineyards climb it — the highest sites sit above fourteen hundred metres.
Up there the days are hot and the nights are genuinely cold, and that swing is what keeps acidity in the grape. It is the same mechanism that makes mountain wine work in Argentina or on Etna.
Pitsilia, the mountain region in the centre of the range, is one of the names that comes up again and again when Cypriot wine is taken seriously. Our Cypriot bottles come from there.
Commandaria, and why it is not on our list.
Most people’s single point of contact with Cypriot wine is Commandaria — the sweet wine made from sun-dried Xynisteri and Mavro, often described as the oldest named wine still in production.
It is a real and serious thing, and it is also a dessert wine, which means it tells you almost nothing about what the island’s dry wines taste like.
We do not pour it, because it does not belong next to a pizza. But if Commandaria is your only frame of reference for Cypriot wine, the dry bottles are going to surprise you.
Come and drink something from up the mountain.
Ask for the Cypriot one. It is ninety minutes from this table and most people who live here have never tried it. We stop at a hundred pizzas a day — the earlier you come, the better your chances.
The things people actually ask.
Q.What are the indigenous grapes of Cyprus?
The main indigenous varieties are Xynisteri, the island’s principal white grape; Mavro, the most widely planted red; Maratheftiko, also known as Vamvakada, a low-yielding quality red; and the rarer Promara and Yiannoudin. Cypriot vines are also unusual in that they still grow on their own roots, because the island escaped the phylloxera epidemic.
Q.Why does altitude matter for Cypriot wine?
Cyprus has a hot climate, and heat alone produces soft, low-acid wine. Vineyards high on the Troodos mountains, in regions such as Pitsilia, experience hot days and cold nights, and that temperature swing preserves acidity in the grapes. The highest Cypriot vineyards sit above 1,400 metres.
Q.Where can I drink Cypriot wine in Larnaca?
Filomena Pizzeria Napoletana, at 1 Aristotelous in Larnaca, Cyprus, pours organic Cypriot wine from the Tsiakkas winery in Pelendri, in the Pitsilia region of the Troodos mountains, alongside Neapolitan pizza. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 6pm to 10pm.