George Skouras of Skouras and Tara Q. Thomas of W&S Magazine George Skouras of Skouras and Tara Q. Thomas of W&S Magazine

I raised this issue with George Skouras, a Dijon-trained enologist, veteran of the quality revolution in the Greek wine industry and now owner of Skouras Wines, one of Greece's most successful medium-sized wine operations. According to Skouras, "international varieties are the passport for Greek wine. At a time when the greater number of Greek vineyards were still geared towards bulk wine production, yields were much higher than is standard for the production of premium wine. Skouras, employing a one-of-a-kind metaphor, asserts, "wines are like a train - they need a locomotive. The domestic market for the cosmopolitan wines created by Skouras and producers like him was partly the result of national pride and partly the result of the fact that these were some of the best products available to consumers. Still, Skouras has no illusions concerning the future of Western varieties in the Greek vineyard. Ultimately he knows that indigenous cultivars will be the calling card for the Greek wine industry in years to come. Having risen to the technical challenge of meeting global standards of vinification, the next stage, he believes - exploiting the full potential of terroir - will be the most difficult.

After pursuing other interests for the past few years Mr. Skouras has recently founded Skouras Films.Modeled closely on Skouras Pictures the new company plans to release six films a year focusing on domestic theatrical releases with plans to expand into digital video production later this year.Mr. Skouras enjoys a broad spectrum of contacts and is active in the daily running of Studio Script Sales.

With someone like George Skouras, a man who has been such a prominent force in the Greek wine industry, it's hard to imagine him as a young twenty-something, crushing his first vintage of wine. Especially because 27 years ago, few would have predicted that skouras_logo.jpg there would be a thriving Greek wine industry in 2011. But thanks, in part, to the efforts of Skouras and several other pioneering winemakers, the foundations that were laid in the early 1980s have led to a thriving and dynamic industry that is making excellent wine. Skouras went on to study at the University of Dijon, getting a degree in viticulture and enology, and getting the opportunity to work in the vineyards of Burgundy, Bordeaux , Champagne, Beaujolais and more. Skouras returned to Greece in 1982 to work for Nicholas Cosmetatos at his winery Gentilini, a pioneering effort that many consider the beginning of the modern winemaking movement in Greece. Skouras didn't know it at the time, but that first vintage was also the first time that anyone had ever blended the native Agiorgitiko (pronounced eye-your-YEE-tih-koh) grape with Cabernet. A decision, Skouras says, that was really based in a lack of faith in Agiorgitiko: "I wasn't sure of the longevity of Agiorgitiko, so I added Cabernet sort of as a warranty - skouras_photo.jpg for some cellaring potential." Now, such blends are common, but at the time, most of the international grape varieties and the indigenous varieties were kept and made separately. Once Skouras had made his first wine, then he had to sell it. Within a few years, Skouras matured his skills as a marketer as fast as he had matured his skills as a winemaker, holding press conferences and setting up tastings for members of the press. Like several other French trained winemakers who all returned to Greece to make wine at around the same time, Skouras rapidly rose to prominence and acclaim. Domaine Skouras now consists of 80 acres of vineyards, many of them older vineyard sites that Skouras purchased near his home town in Malandreni, where his flagship winery sits, about an hour and a half from Athens. This was his second winery, however, as his first venture was a small winery in Gymno in the Nemea region, the area of the Peloponnese peninsula synonymous with the grape Agiorgitiko. The winery produces northwards of 50,000 cases of wine a year, across a wide range of bottlings, some of which are as small as a few thousand bottles. While Skouras is actively involved in the day-to-day operations, he now has a winery team of very competent individuals that handle most of the production, giving him time to represent both the winery and the Greek wine industry as a whole (Skouras was Vice President of the Greek Wine Federation for some time). After nearly 30 years in the vineyards and cellar, Skouras shows very little sign of slowing down.

George Skouras, a Dijon graduate and key wine-revolution figure, established his first winery near Argos, east of Neméa, about ten years ago. Having established himself as both an important producer and negociant, he recently opened a second operation in Neméa, in a sense closing the chapter of cooperative-dominated production in the region. He is a virtuoso performer with Agiorgitiko and one of the region's most deft hot-climate manipulators of Western white cultivars such as Chardonnay and Viognier.