Ktima Ligas

Greece, Pella

The Story

Even though Greece was a centre for winemaking for centuries, like virtually all wine-making countries in Europe, the phylloxera epidemic wiped out nearly all the vineyards there. When replanting began, many traditional varieties fell from favour and were replaced with international grapes. At the same time, industrial farming replaced time-honoured methods and hundreds of years of winemaking tradition began to be erased.

In the early 80’s, near Thessaloniki in Pella, winemaker Thomas Ligas began a quest to revive both the traditional varieties and traditional agricultural practices of the region. He did a deep dive into the local ecosystem and began exploring biodynamic farming. He searched far and wide for cuttings of nearly extinct varieties and began his own grafting nursery.

Ktima Ligas was founded in 1985 and embraced organics and permaculture from the start– eschewing all chemicals and additives while encouraging native plants to grow at will. He foraged the nearby mountains for herbs and plants to make herbal treatments with captured rain water to nurture his precious Roditis, Kydonitsa, Xinomavro and Limniona vines.

Creating great wines from these dismissed grapes was his singular focus, despite resistance from all directions. His daughter, and current Ligas winemaker Meli explains, “The local varieties were unfashionable at the time; these were varieties that Greek people didn’t want to work with. It wasn’t considered ‘knowledgeable’ to use them. Everyone else was working with Merlot, Cab, Chardonnay or Pinot!” The Greek government also supported these trendier varieties with subsidies, further pushing growers away from tradition.

“For everyone in Greece at that time, with grapes it was a case of ‘forget the old, and go with the new.” Meli

But Thomas stood firm and forged a new path for the nearly forgotten grapes, maximising their potential through natural farmng and reduced yields. He made only four cuvées, one from each grape, as he felt the best way to present these grapes and express the terroir was to not blend varieties or plots. His wines slowly but surely gained attention, and eventually he could not keep up with demand and the popularity of these once-overlooked grapes rose to the point that other winemakers began asking to visit the domaine to take cuttings to propagate their own vines.

In those early days Thomas had little to spend on winemaking, so he embraced natural methods to achieve his goals. Instead of buying enzymes and yeasts, he simply used longer macerations to naturally extract these elements from the skins of the grapes. He skipped pricey sprays, and instead worked to increase the biodiversity in his vineyards, ultimately reducing problems naturally. He also had no need for filtration equipment or added sulphites.

Meli Ligas grew up trailing her father among the vines and into the forest, and was destined to join in his quest. Thomas, Meli and Jason (Meli’s brother) worked together for many years, expanding the range of wines while maintaining the vision. Meli has now taken the reigns, and the vineyards continue to thrive under her watchful eye and the wines reflect her innovative spirit and dedication to local grapes. She has planted additional sites, created new cuvées and fine-tuned the winemaking methods with regard to each vintage, parcel and grape.

“Every Ligas wine comes from its own designated parcel: with vines ranging from around seven years old up to over forty, and soil types that vary from schist to clay-limestone.”

This diversity is what Meli enjoys exploring, and she believes maceration is the key. Aside from the cuvée Pata Trava, which is made in a blanc de noirs style via direct press, all of the domaine’s wines all undergo a period of maceration on the skins – ranging from two to five days for the whites to 45 days for the intense red Bucephale Xinomavro. All skin contact is done as an infusion to limit extraction and maximise freshness and most grapes are destemmed. After maceration, the juice is sent by gravity into a vessel where it cools, relaxes and begins a natural ferment. Meli uses special temperature controlled stainless steel tanks with an incline at the bottom for maximum skin contact, and only takes the first jus de goutte – she insists the jus de presse lacks sufficient quality.

“Everything depends on how you make the skin contact. If it’s one month in barrels, or amphorae, or steel, it reveals very different identities.”

Meli enlisted a local ceramicist to make amphorae for the maceration of her Kydonitsa, using clay from the nearby Atlas mountains. The porous clay helps extract more of the grape’s minerality and maximises aromatics. Meli says, “After 12 years of tasting with different types of amphorae, we have the ones we need!”

For ageing, the vessel used depends on the grape and parcel. Stainless steel is used to heighten the expression of the Roditis Pella and Assyrtiko Lamda cuvées, but the Roditis Barrique and Assyrtiko Barrique wines use old wood barrels to create a more complex version of those same grapes from different sites.

Although Assyrtiko is world-renowned as the top white Greek grape, Ligas is particularly well-known for bringing Roditis back to the forefront. “Roditis is the main variety in Greece, but normally it’s used in blends for massive production, simply for quantity. But my father always wanted to work with it on its own. Roditis is quite a ‘low profile wine’ — it doesn’t have much acidity, but it does have minerality. Clay and limestone soils give freshness to the juice. It’s all about how you grow the vines…. It can give something smooth, generous in the mouth, and spicy on the nose, with that minerality and even subtle floral aromas.”

Three red indigenous varieties are another passion. Ximomavro is the grape that makes Meli’s eyes light up. “Xinomavro is one of my favourites. You can work in so many different ways— Blanc de Noirs, light reds, heavier reds, solera, dark rosé, light rosé… there are so many possibilities. It has lots of acidity, lots of tannins, lots of colour, so depending on how you organise picking, you can have very different approaches.” Moschomavro, is another local red which tends to have higher pH levels, but if picked early and vinifiedlike a blanc de noirs, with just a moment on the skins, it creates a light style, floral and easy-drinking. There is also one vineyard of Limniona, which is known for wines low in tannins with lilac notes.

Grapes are handpicked between mid-August and late September with one of the most important decisions being the picking date. While Thomas followed the cycles of nature to determine the harvest, Meli has been experimenting with earlier picking dates.

“I sometimes pick a little bit earlier, as I want to give the grapes time to settle down in the winery.… It’s a philosophy of time and energy; I like to give the grapes room and time to feel cooler, to not be stressed…”

That lack of stress is apparent when tasting Ktima Ligas wines. These intense but relaxed wines are exported all over the world and have earned the moniker ‘The Ligas nose’ for their unique profiles. Meli’s vision remains one of biodiversity, purity and transparency, in both the farming and production of the wines. These are honest, unadulterated Greek wines that speak to us of the place where they were grown and made with love.

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The People

Thomas & Meli

In the early 1980’s Thomas Ligas was working as a farmer alongside his father in Thessaloniki Greece. In an attempt to broaden his agricultural horizons (and escape the dictatorship politics of the time), Thomas decided to travel to France and study oenology. He fell in love with wine making, and also with a French woman. He returned with his new wife to Greece for mandatory military service, working as an oenologist for large wineries. But he felt lost. The Greek wine system was in a phase of industrialisation, which he considered too dependent on technology and the use of foreign grapes. He had developed his own, clear ethos on viticulture and began to carve a way to express that philosophy. Soon enough, several vineyards were rented and he began making experimental wines on a very small-scale.

Since day one, Thomas sought a holistic connection to the land. He was greatly inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s, a Japanese philosopher and farmer whose approach has been described as ‘Steiner without cow horns’. Thomas worked through observation and operated by instinct. Meli says,“He has always picked herbs to make teas for the wine, follows the cycles of the natural world, pays attention to the moon cycles… At the time, he really thought he was on his own in doing so. Every other Greek winemaker said he was doing bad work, and that he thought he was a magician.” Thomas was unknowingly following a biodynamic, permaculture approach. Meli continues, “He was truly an autodidact (self-taught) when it came to this. He would learn about the particularities of a certain plant, and then say, ‘why can’t I use it for my vines?’ This was all done through feeling.”

Meli, who grew up speaking both French and Greek and shadowing her father around the vineyards and cellar, always knew she wanted to follow in his footsteps. She went to France to study viticulture, even choosing to go to the same university as her father – hoping to be similarly inspired, but also to learn how science and wine interact.

“You are taught how to grow vines and make wine with chemistry, but not without. It’s like medicine – they teach you how to get better – but they don’t teach you how to not get sick in the first place.”

Meli’s education only confirmed her faith in the natural, hands-off methods her father promoted. “If you give your wines time, you can achieve the same result without additions,” she says. Meli sees wine as not the sole product of a vineyard – there are other plants and species that rely on the land and all must be protected. “We are just passing by here on Earth. Nature is always more important to listen to. There’s no need to go against nature, but rather we can feel the flow of nature, and follow that flow,” says Meli.

Thomas is proud of the direction Meli has taken Kitma Ligas, and he frequently still stops by to visit the cellar and do light work in the vineyards, and of course makes frequent trips with Meli into the mountains to gather herbs and plants.

Jason, Meli’s brother, once was heavily involved in the winery, but now has moved on to other wine projects in Greece, on the mainland and on the island of Samos. They continue to share ideas and inspiration as well as plenty of wine.

Meli has a few interns, and of course extra help at harvest, but mostly she is on her own. A constant companion is Tsuka, a large black and white dog who follows her around the vineyards in cooler times of the day. But in the afternoon heat he honours the Greek tradition of seeking refuge in the cool cellar for a little nap.

The Place

The ancient Greeks are well-known for their love of wine, and Greece is littered with historical and literary references to vinous delights. The area of surrounding Kitma Ligas, Pella, was renowned for its wines, and archeologists have found evidence that the first vineyards in Greece were cultivated here in as early as 2200 BC. Aristotle himself kept a vineyard nearby. The first performance of the Euripides tragedy Bacchae took place around 408BC in the Theatre of Dionysus in Pella, honouring Bacchus (or Dionysus), the ancient god of wine and joy. Bacchus, wreathed in vine leaves, appears in numerous mosaics found in the area – overseeing the fertile, hallowed ground.

In the 17th century there were nearly twelve thousand acres of vineyards in the area around Thessaloniki, each vineyard with its own special place where people came together to enjoy the wine. You could even say Pella was partially built with wine, as a nearby church used wine in its mortar after Ottoman rulers banned the use of water for church building.

There is however one downside to the ancient history of this area. Winemakers here are always on alert for unearthing ancient relics. They live in fear of finding them, as if a historical artefact is discovered, all work must be stopped and the government can take over the land for excavations. Meli says a neighbouring winemaker once planted a relic on their property, just to avoid the ramifications himself.

The area was known for its wines for centuries, until Phylloxera and the drainage of the nearby lake forced farmers to turn to other crops. The region, and Greece overall, fell from grace. But the traditions of thousands of years were far from forgotten, and eventually brave farmers like Thomas Ligas replanted vineyards. And why not? The terroir in Pella features all the essential components of a great-wine recipe: lot of sun and fresh air, nutrient-rich soils and a vibrant natural ecosystem.

”The gentle slopes of Pella enjoy bountiful sun and air. Our vines draw strength from the loamy sand, limey and well-drained soil, which we keep fluffy and rested. We preserve the natural grasses… producing a vibrant microcosm that grows a harmonious equilibrium in the soil.”

At Ligas, naturally occurring plants are encouraged, keeping the soils and vines healthy, and grasses are cut only if needed to prevent suffocating the vines. “We leave everything to grow together. The plants that grow here are interconnected and interact with one another. We don’t want the sun to burn the skin of the earth. When you let the earth grow, you have grass. The grass keeps our vines cooler.”

Those soils also benefit from a house-made compost used to boost a lack of acid & minerals from the heat. Manure is left to compost for the summer and dried, then mixed with leftover fermented skins, “…just for the soil to remember the identity of the wines” explains Meli. It is spread around the vineyards in December to decompose on the roots over winter, when rains help conduct the materials into the soil.

“We’re actually feeding the animals, worms and the insects, and so they are working for us! We’re really a bit lazy— we don’t work the vines, they work for us!”

The permaculture ethos is applied to every aspect of their winery. “We are independent when it comes to water and energy; we’ve had solar panels since 2003. We have the sun! We don’t need to take petrol from the earth to make electricity,” says Meli.

"We have been speaking and debating about the climate for years— decades— yet nobody takes action. I think on a small scale, by using solar and captured rainwater at the winery, we can give support to the earth.”

Incessant exploration and a nature-first mindset are the pillars of the Ktima Ligas philosophy. Meli’s dedication to quality wines pales only to her dedication to preserving Mother Nature. Walking through the vineyards, she can’t resist babying her vines, and frequently stops to tuck in straggling shoots and twist branches around wires. She pulls excess leaves from vines and tucks them in her pocket, explaining that she will later use them for wrapping dolmas.

Given the historical ties of Pella and Bacchus, it's fitting that Ktima Ligas is using the ancient techniques of this region to bring both wine and joy to its customers today. Vintage after vintage Meli’s wines highlight the strength of using local grapes on their native terroir, and winemaking guided by intuition not restriction. Each sip of a Ligas wine is a taste of Greek history, land and the benefits of returning to tradition.