What happens when an entire family is passionate for nature? They abandon city life and move to countryside. This is the story of Kioutsoukis family (Dimitrios, Eleftheria and their children). Dimitrios Kioutsoukis with his family assistance and inspiration planted 11 hectars of vines (mainly Greek grape varieties: Assyrtiko, Malagousia, Roditis, Xinomavro) in northern Greece near Thessaloniki, an area well known from ancient times for its wines.
Dimitrios (chemical engineer- UC Davis winemaking) and his daughter Stavroula ( agronomist- oenologist) carrying on the family tradition and passionate about permaculture principles use more than organic methods in viticulture and winemaking. Their main goal is to give birth to wines versatile, unique that express both their philosophy and the terroir.
Seeking the real taste of life they created the Kamara pure wines, low intervention wines (natural wines).
All Kamara pure wines are naturally fermented with indigenous yeasts , have no oenological substances added and they are bottled without filtration and no added sulfites
"Let the nature do the fertilization"
Does this method makes winemaking easier, or harder in the long run?
In the first years, we have a lot of hard work to do, because human in general has destroyed the nature up to a point. The use and abuse of fertillisations, pesticides, fungicides are only some of the factors having led to this destruction as well as to a subsequent weakening of nature’s power. For generations, the majority of farmers and agronomists thought of nature as flawed, as something that really needed his intervention. So, in order to undo the negative results of those bad practices which have been going on for so many generations, hard work need to be done. We have the vineyard checked every 2 days for diseases; most of the work in the vineyard is done manually, so that we do not bother the wildlife as much as we can.
Regarding the vinification, we could not say that the work is easier or harder. What we can certainly say is that work is more risky. We should throw away the grapes that are not 100% healthy and good and as a consequence the production is much less than in a conventional vineyard. In the winery, the work continues with controling the wines or the fermenting musts every day. We taste the wines in order to see if there is any fault, we control the temperatures of the tanks, we check the wines in our laboratory-analysis of volatile acidity, analysis of biomass( to see the population of the yeasts ) etc.
In the long run, to be honest, I could not say for sure whether the work will be harder or easier; for the moment we have to face a lot of difficulties, but I think –and hope!- that in the future the situation will become more stable and thus a bit easier. Right now, only one thing is beyond every doubt: that the winemaking of this type will continue to intrigue me no matter how hard it is.
We bring greek Authentic natural wines arround the world
Kamara estate / Kioutsoukis family
24th Km Thessaloniki Kilkis
PO BOX 2404 / 57018 Oreokastro
Thessaloniki Greece
tel : 0030 23410 64980
email:info@kamarawinery.com