A drink with…Eleni Kechri: Exploring pine forest terroir in Retsina

About Eleni Kechri

After two decades making wine at her family estate Kechris and forging a reputation for new-wave Retsina, Eleni Kechri has created 1979 Kallos. Established in 2024, after four years of research, 1979 Kallos is focused on exploring the finer nuances of this distinctive Greek wine. Trained as both a chemical engineer and oenologist, Kechri has done extensive studies on the pine resin used in Retsina – crafting the first modern wines to use sustainably sourced resin – a method that has just been granted a patent by the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation.

Now she is exploring the influence of a forest’s terroir on the resin and resulting wine – using resin from different areas in the same wine to shine a light on “single-pineyard” expressions. We caught up with Kechri and Yiorgos Darlas, who works alongside Kechri at 1979 Kallos, to find out more.

A drink with Eleni Kechri and Yiorgos Darlas

Eleni Kechri: ‘We call it meta-retsina. I saw that the resin is not the same every year. It’s not the same from every region. It’s not the same from one forest to another. But the most interesting thing to see for me was the collection without sulfuric acid. The collector puts sulfuric acid in order to make the tree release more resin, more quickly.’

Yiorgos Darlas: ‘This is the conventional method. The sulfuric acid paste keeps the wound open and this way the tree gives a larger amount of resin and it’s much easier for the collector. When you leave it without sulfuric paste, the resin closes the wound, so you have to go and tap the tree again.’

Eleni Kechri: ‘But this sulfuric acid, it influences the quality a lot. I said, okay, what if we don’t put any chemicals on the tree and, where the tree is giving us resin, we leave it free-run? We’ll have less in quantity, but I was feeling that the quality would be much, much higher. But what about the quality of our wine?

‘So I started to make lots of experiments – some lots with conventional resin and some lots with sustainable resin.

‘We worked three years with lots of different protocols and we found clearly [confirmed with tastings, gas chromatography and liquid chromatography] that the conventional resin has a more oily character and the sustainable resin produced more limonene, which is the citrus character, and more terpenes – the components that we like to have and are more refined.

‘Not only this, we found that in sustainably collected resin, the nature is expressed: the retsina produced from the pines near the sea smells differently from the retsina produced from the pines on the mountain every year. The trees that are by the sea, they have almost the roots in the sea, so you smell the saltiness, and the mountains are different.

‘It’s the first time that we are putting in the conversation the terroir of the pine in the background: imagine how many different combinations of areas, of vineyards, of grapes, of pineyards…

‘It is an enormous topic – with a lot of factors to explore: the area, the family, the age of the tree, and the freshness for me. We are going to make new research now, more specific in the same areas, how different it will be family by family of trees.’

Yiorgos Darlas: ‘We are going to look deeper into the terroir of the microclimate of the forest.’

Eleni Kechri: ‘And we are researching now the early collection – the collection of very cold resin in April, versus hot resin in August or September – because most of the time the collectors prefer to collect resin in the hot months because it flows more easily.’

Yiorgos Darlas: ‘But we know from experience, and it makes sense, that resin that flows in April and May is different, has different qualities and different aromas.’

Eleni Kechri: ‘In the style of retsina that I’m making, I like mature Assyrtiko – harvesting golden grapes. I also like very low yields in the vineyard in order to have a very concentrated wine, with a lot of elements.

‘With conventional resin, I had to do things during the vinification in order not to take the resin’s heavy character. But if the resin doesn’t have the oily, heavy aromas that I don’t want, I can put more [in the wine] because I want this character – so I’m not afraid to leave it.

‘It’s the first time that we speak not only of the terroir of the vineyards, but in the background, we have the terroir of the pine-yards.

‘It’s a matter of mentality for us – to leave the nature to be expressed. It is the sense of place of Greece: the terroir is the plant, the climat and the human. In Retsina, there are all these things two times – once for the vineyard, once for the pineyard.’