Greece increases its wine exports despite crisis

“Greece’s wine exports are on the rise. The figures make us look forward to the future optimistically”, Sotiris Ioannou, president of the Greek Interprofessional Organisation for Vine and Wine. “This is as well the result of our vintners being supported by the EU. Now, the wine marketing program with 7 million euro, yields first results.”

The strengthening by the EU and the positive result in export makes the wine estates present themselves more extroverted. They are intensifying their collaboration with social media and are taking part in road shows and competitions all over the world. Furthermore, the producers are concentrating on the peculiarities of domestic autochthonous sorts of grapes like Assyrtiko, Moschofilero, Agiorgitiko and Xinomavro as spearhead, which all present Greece’s terroir best.

“This is the first time for the whole wine industry to act in concert”, Sotiris Ioannou says: “Moreover, the wine estates invest their own money; this makes them present themselves more self-conscious and, finally, has a positive effect on the quality of the wine.”

This is, too, confirmed by Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, owner of the Gaia Wines company: “In the past two years, we won two regional trophies and a gold medal at the Decanter World Wine Award. The reasons why we are meanwhile exporting 60 percent of our production is, too, a success of the quality of our wines.”

And Vangelis Gerovassiliou, founder of the Gerovassiliou domaine, whose wines won gold and silver medals at the Decanter World Wine Award, can see a correlation between the success in exports and the effects of the economic breakdown in Greece. “Our wine estate is one of the most famous ones in Greece. Yet, during the last few years, we have lost up to 50 percent of our Greek customers. While in Greece we concentrated only on cheap wines, we exported in other European countries and overseas. In the UK alone, we were able to increase our exports by 100 percent in 2011.” (red.yoopress)