Food And Drink in Santorini

Santorini is a rare case where the local cooking is explained by geology. The soils are volcanic, rain is nearly absent, but at night fog comes in from the sea and the plants live off that moisture. So the vine here is not trained up a trellis but coiled into a ring at ground level — a basket with the fruit hidden inside, sheltered from the wind and gathering dew. White assyrtiko grown on ash yields a dense wine with mineral acidity and a saline finish. Tastings are held on terraces above the caldera, and usually amount to a full trip across two or three estates.

The island's second name in a glass is vinsanto. The grapes are laid out to dry in the sun for weeks, the sugar concentrates, and the result is a thick sweet wine aged in barrel for years. It comes at the end, alongside dry vegetable dishes, and it tastes nothing like dessert wine in the usual sense. The wineries generally walk you through the whole chain — from the basket in the field to the rows of barrels in a cellar cut into volcanic tuff.

The table reads the island as well. The tomatoes here are small and extremely concentrated; they go into tomatokeftedes, fried patties with mint. The white aubergine is sweeter than the ordinary kind, and fava made from the local split pea is served warm with onion and capers. Many sea programmes combine all this with cooking on board: a barbecue on the catamaran during the daytime or sunset run, when lunch comes with that same view of the cliff.