Mavrodaphne

Mavrodaphne is a dark-skinned Greek red grape best known for Mavrodaphne of Patras, the sweet, fortified red dessert wine of the north-western Peloponnese. Deep and almost opaque in the glass, it pours a rich mahogany-brown to garnet colour and delivers a warm, luscious sweetness built on sun-dried raisin, prune and dried fig, wrapped in chocolate, coffee, caramel and spice. Fortified to around 15 percent alcohol and aged for years — often in a warming solera-style system of stacked barrels — it is silky, soft and long-finishing, a Greek answer to Port and Recioto. Prized as a dessert and contemplation wine and traditionally used as a sacramental communion wine, it is the sweet, brooding face of Greek red.