Sweet Start: Commandaria

I write about things I love. And I love wine. Doing a lot of wine research, I found out that there is a lot of wines in the world which are unknown or little known for Internet audience. I know, I know, preferred beverage on the Net is beer. I also like a beer, sometimes. But I always prefer wine to beer. And this blog is about wines I like.

I decided to start this blog with wine mostly unknown in US. Here it is:

One of the oldest dessert wines in the world: Commandaria from Cyprus. Sweet Cyprus wine was mentioned by ancient Greek authors.
Most dessert wines in the world are fortified, i.e. the process of fermentation is stopped by adding alcohol to wine. Commandaria is different: it's made of special varieties of grapes, overriped and left in the sun to dry a little bit. As a result, juice contains a lot of sugar and fermentation stopped when alcohol level reaches 15% volume and yeasts die, still leaving some sugar in the wine.
Result is a sweet light dessert wine. Very different from any other.

There are three major producers of Commandaria on Cyprus.
Loel makes Comandaria Alasia (picture above).
Keo: Commandaria St. John
Etko: Commandaria St. Nicolas

Avoid Keo, wines from Loel and Etko are much better. Loel is my favorite, but Etko comes close second.