Three of our bottles come from one mountain village.
Pelendri, up in Pitsilia. A family since 1988, organic since 1995, and vines at 1,440 metres. This is the house we pour most of.
- GrapeXynisteri · Mavro · Vamvakada
- GrowerTsiakkas
- PlacePelendri, Pitsilia · Cyprus
- Up to1,440 m
- Organic since1995
You may have a low opinion of Cypriot wine. That is not your fault.
For most of the last century the island was asked to produce volume, not character — bulk wine, shipped off in tankers, and a grape chosen for how much it could yield in the heat.
A lot of people therefore met Cypriot wine in its worst possible form and quietly filed it away. Perfectly reasonable conclusion, drawn from perfectly real evidence.
What changed is that a small number of growers stopped doing that. This is one of them, and it is the reason the wine we are proudest to pour is the local one.
Pelendri, Pitsilia, and a long way up.
Costas Tsiakkas founded the winery in 1988 and runs it with his wife Maria, in Pelendri — a village in Pitsilia, the mountain region in the middle of the Troodos range. It is about an hour and a half from Larnaca and it feels like another country.
They went organic in 1995, which on this island in that decade was not a marketing decision. It was a harder way to farm, chosen early.
The vineyards are scattered and high. The top sites reach around 1,440 metres at Petralona; at Mouklos, around 920 metres, there are vines over eighty years old. Altitude is what makes the difference here: the days are hot, the nights are cold, and the grapes keep their acidity instead of cooking.
The varieties are the other half of it. Xynisteri, Maratheftiko, Promara, Yiannoudin — Cypriot grapes that most growers pulled up because they are awkward. Tsiakkas kept planting them.
The white, the pink and the red — all three are theirs.
The Xynisteri is the white: light, dry, citrus and mountain herbs, and the bottle we hand to anyone who says "surprise me".
The Kokkinos is the rosé, and it carries Vamvakada, one of the island’s own red grapes. It is the one for a hot evening and a table that cannot agree.
The Moukos is the red, made from Mavro — the grape that covers most of Cyprus and almost never gets treated seriously. Here it is.
Ask for whichever you like. Or ask for "the Cypriot one" and let us choose based on what you ordered.
A Neapolitan pizzeria pouring more Cypriot wine than Italian.
Daniele was born in Naples and everything else about this place points home — the flour, the tomatoes, the oven, the accent.
And then the shelf holds three bottles from a mountain village ninety minutes up the road, more than from any single Italian producer. Nobody planned that as a statement. It happened because the wine is good and it is from here.
Come and drink something local for once.
If you have lived on this island for years and never had a Cypriot wine you liked, this is the place to fix that. Ask for the Tsiakkas. We stop at a hundred pizzas a day — the earlier you come, the better your chances.
The things people actually ask.
Q.Who is Tsiakkas?
Tsiakkas is a family winery in Pelendri, in the Pitsilia region of the Troodos mountains in Cyprus. It was founded in 1988 by Costas Tsiakkas, who runs it with his wife Maria, and it has farmed organically since 1995. Its highest vineyards reach about 1,440 metres.
Q.What is the Pitsilia wine region?
Pitsilia is a mountain wine region in the centre of Cyprus, on the slopes of the Troodos range. Its vineyards sit at high altitude, where hot days and cold nights preserve acidity in the grapes, and it is one of the areas on the island most associated with serious wine from indigenous varieties.
Q.Which Tsiakkas wines does Filomena serve?
Filomena in Larnaca pours three Tsiakkas wines: the Xynisteri white, the Kokkinos rosé, and the Moukos red made from the indigenous Mavro grape.
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 the Troodos mountains alongside Neapolitan pizza. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 6pm to 10pm.