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Whenever I talk to people about the dramatic down-sizing of the Cyprus wine industry it sparks all sorts of comments. Generally negative. “It was the fault of the government, they have always done nothing”. “The Big Four wine companies in Limassol are to blame”. “It was the growers”. “It was the unions”. “It was lack of marketing”. And so on.
All of these factors may have been a contributor to the shrinking of the wine industry by 70% in the past 10 years, but there is one other that in my view is more accountable than any other.
The Mavro grape.
Unknown anywhere else, this indigenous vine whose provenance is unknown has accounted for as much as 80% of vineyard area in Cyprus. It isn’t a good wine grape and it isn’t a good table grape, lacking acidity and fruitiness. So how on earth did it become so “popular”? To find the answer we have to go back quite deep in our rural history. During the Ottoman era, Greek Cypriots got the poorest areas of land in which to grow crops and in many parts only vines could be cultivated. A hardy, high cropping grape that could be used to eat fresh, pressed as juice, boiled to make sweetmeats, dried as raisins, vinified and distilled was essential to the hard life of the hill villager. And there was one that had been here for yonks, the Mavro.
So this ubiquitous grape was all things to all men – from marinating pork meat for Loukanika, to distilling into the great winter warmer, Zivania. Eventually, as the four big wines and spirits factories in Limassol built their big businesses, the Mavro grape, sold to the wineries by the growers as a cash crop, was the basis of million upon million litres of Sangria, other aromatics, very cheap table wine exported in bulk, and spirits of many kinds.
But times and tastes change and these lucrative manufacturing and exporting activities were hit by cheaper competition from EU countries, EU laws and a market-driven demand for good quality bottled table wine. The bulk of the Mavro crop became unwanted by the big wineries, the new young regional winemakers chose other grapes to make their wines, and the growers whose vineyards were largely tended by elderly men and women were being abandoned or grubbed out to be replaced with olive or fruit trees.
So, is there no hope for the Mavro? Not as a table wine. I have left until last another use for this grape. Along with the Xynisteri (itself once thought of as being impossible to make a good white wine, but now happily producing some delicious ones) Mavro has been a staple grape of “Commandaria”. It’s basically flaccid state benefits from drying in the sun and then raisin-like, being vinified into the dark brown sweet wine.
And here may lie the reason why the Mavro has survived and prospered for century after century. In antiquity and well into the Middle Ages, making a jar or bottle with an air-tight stopper for wine was either impossible or difficult. “Dry” wine soon became oxidised, but wine with a high sugar content lasted much longer. So, until the cork came along, if you wanted to transport or keep wine, you made it sweet. And nowhere in days of old did they do it better than in Cyprus, where from 1191 AD when King Richard the Lion Heart married Queen Berengaria in Cyprus and he and his Knights of St John held sway over the island. The Knights’ bases (like Kolossi Castle) were known as “Commanderie”, and with their penchant for ensuring the stuff was well made, drunk in quantity and exported to Royal and Ecclesiastical Courts all over Europe, wasn’t long before the wine had the handy name of “Commandaria” attached to it.
Thus, as long as there is a market for it and the combined efforts of the CTO, the growers and winemakers continue to promote it, the accursed Mavro will survive,
Patrick Skinner
