Ktima Flamourou

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Ktima Flamourou 2023 Single Vineyard Assyrtiko, Greece	Login	—	Special Order Item
Ktima Flamourou 2023 'Kissiropi' Gaidouria, Greece	Login	—	Special Order Item

On the tiny Cycladic island of Anafi, southeast of Santorini, Ktima Flamourou is producing wines on an almost impossibly small scale. Remote, windswept, and strikingly austere, Anafi is home to roughly 150 permanent residents and remains largely removed from the intensive tourism that has transformed many of its Aegean neighbors. Hot, arid summers and cool winters define the climate, while the island’s isolation has helped preserve an agricultural landscape and way of life increasingly rare in the Cyclades.

Anafi has a long and complicated history. During parts of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the island served as a place of political exile for hundreds of Greek communists. Today, life moves at a markedly different pace. Fishing, small-scale agriculture, and the rhythms of the seasons remain part of everyday life, particularly after the last summer visitors have departed. In Chora, the island’s main village, narrow cobbled lanes wind between whitewashed houses and churches before climbing toward the remains of a Venetian castle overlooking the Cretan Sea.

It was here that Stefanos Michalis spent his summers beginning at the age of ten. Between swimming, fishing, and exploring the island, he helped his uncle, Alki Michalis, in the family vineyard. Alki, a heart surgeon by profession and passionate wine lover, established Ktima Flamourou in the 1990s, planting vineyards and building a tiny winery with the help of the late Haridimos Hatzidakis, one of the most influential figures in modern Santorini wine.

Stefanos eventually followed that connection into winemaking. While studying chemistry, he completed an internship with Hatzidakis on Santorini in 2008 and vinified his first grapes from Anafi. Over the years, he gradually assumed responsibility for Ktima Flamourou, developing an approach centered on the island's remarkable old vineyards, native varieties, and minimal intervention in the cellar.

Farming on Anafi is rarely easy. Stefanos works with fruit from vineyards belonging to the island's monastery as well as isolated parcels scattered across steep slopes, some accessible only on foot or by donkey. The vines range dramatically in age, from young plantings to survivors approaching a century old. Among them are an extraordinary collection of Cycladic varieties, including Gaidouria, Assyrtiko, Aidani, Fokiano, Mavrotragano, Mandilaria, Voudomato, Tryfiliatiko, and Eftakilo.

The winery is as modest as the vineyards are remarkable. Annual production totals only around 5,000 bottles across six wines, and the entire cellar consists of just twelve 350-liter tanks. Fermentations rely on native yeasts, sulfur additions are kept very low, and the wines are bottled unfiltered. Nearly everything is done by hand, including bottling and labeling.

Stefanos also continues to use an old basket press inherited from Haridimos Hatzidakis. Though inefficient by modern standards, he values its slow and gentle extraction. The gradual pressing exposes the juice to a small amount of oxygen, lending another subtle dimension to wines that are otherwise shaped as little as possible in the cellar.