FIVE CENTURIES WITH THE AROMA & AFTERTASTE OF A GOOD LIFE

                                                            History       

A setting with breathtaking beauty a real life fairy tale and people who tell their story, from the Middle Ages to the present, through the “Art of Wine”

Chestnut and oak trees give the horizon its blended colour. The Agrafa “ Sleeping Beauty ” if you squint a little,the mountains form a shape of a female form in repose casts its shadow over the plain. 

It shields the tiny villages, safe in its welcoming embrace, and protects them from invaders. 

People raised between the earth and sky, their faces creased by hard work,mornings damp with rain and afternoons sizzling in the sun.

                                            A LONG JOURNEY WITH DEEP ROOTS

The village of Messenicolas lies nested in this warm embrace.A small village with a long history endowed with an unexpected legacy: a fascinating tale. 

This story does not begin “once upon a time”, but with an arrival. That of Monsieur Nicolas (Messie Nikola), a Frankish nobleman who ended up in the area in 1455 after his battalion disbanded. Charmed by the village and its surrounndings, he settled in to start a new life. 

Monsieur Nicolas carried with him the French wine-making culture and his love for grape-growing. 

This led him to systematically develop viticulture in the region and particularly the “Black Messenicola”varietal, a unique type that grew in the area since antiquity. 

The locals gave his name, which they pronounced to sound like “Messenicolas”, to the village and to the grape variety, as a modicum of appreciation for his contribution to the grape-producing and wine-making heritage of the area. 

                                                                        WINERY

                                                                OUR PHILOSOPHY

“THE ART OF WINE IS THE ART OF LIFE ITSELF”

“My dream is to make the history of Messenicolas village, the local varietals and particularly the ‘Black Messenicola’ grape known in all corners of the world.”

                                                                                 Giorgos Karamitros – wine maker

Giannis Karamitros (the younger) takes up the thread of the family’s history around 1960 and begins to unravel it in his own way.

With new ideas generated by his unique talent for identifying market demand, he added new vineyards, replacing aged vines with newer ones and testing new varieties.

The 1970s and 1980s were a prosperous period for Giannis and his wife, Giannoula. The wine and tsipouro they produced was very popular with wine-lovers both in the region and beyond.

In 1990, Giannis and Giannoula Karamitros handed the business over to their son,George Karamitros,though they remained actively involved. They were present from dawn to dusk every day, checking on the vineyards,monitoring fermentation, imparting their knowledge and, at the same time, being kept abreast of every new development in wine consumption, trade and technology by their son, Giorgos.

           The Karamitros family. Four generations dedicated to wine making .