Economou Winery

Old Liatiko on the Ziros Plateau

Old Liatiko gives Yiannis Economou, winemaker at Economou Winery in Ziros, the material he keeps returning to on the high plateau. He has worked here since 1994, after training at Alba University and working in Germany, Piedmont, and at Château Margaux in France. That sequence matters less as a résumé than as cellar memory: different regions, different habits of extraction and patience, then the decision to hold one Cretan site at the center of the work. At Economou Winery, his role is both owner and winemaker, a station he has kept long enough for the place to read through him. The wines most closely attached to his name are Liatiko, Sitia Red, and Antigone, with Antigone carrying the clearest signature. The house works at small scale, organically, on the remote Ziros Plateau, where the Sitia appellation meets marl soils, mountains, stone buildings, and weather with little softness in it. The through line is not novelty. It is duration, fruit, and a winemaker who stayed.

A cellar built for time in barrel

The program at Economou Winery rests on still red and still white wines, with Liatiko at the center and Mandilari, Vilana, Thrapsathiri, and Assyrtiko also named in the cellar’s orbit. The defining choice is time: long barrel aging, handled at a pace that resists the quick release. That patience suits the site. Ziros sits on a rugged plateau at 600m, and the marl soils give the work a firm mineral frame before the wine ever reaches wood. Economou’s method is described through organic growing, rare ancient Liatiko vines, and terroir-driven decisions rather than cellar display. Barrel tasting is the form most closely associated with the hospitality here, which keeps the attention on wine still in motion, not on a polished script.

Stone buildings, steel vats, quiet air

The place itself keeps a low voice. Economou Winery sits among old stone buildings and outdoor steel vats, with the mountains close enough to make the cellar feel set apart rather than staged. The setting is isolated and rugged, a high-plateau winery whose quiet suits barrel tasting and small-scale work. Nothing in the room asks to compete with the wine. The counter, the cellar, the tasting room, and the yard all return attention to the same materials: marl soil, old vines, steel, wood, and the hands deciding when enough time has passed. In Ziros, intimacy is not a design note. It is what a remote cellar becomes when the production stays small and the pace belongs to the maker.

Antigone as the marker

Antigone remains the wine most firmly tied to Economou’s name, the bottle that gives his Sitia work its clearest point of recognition. Liatiko and Sitia Red widen the frame, but Antigone carries the line back to the cellar, the plateau, and the decision to let time do visible work in Ziros.