The Cyprus Wine Club

Founded in 2014 by three wine lovers...

Wine has been part of Cyprus history for more than 4000 years. Today Cyprus wine is a combination of tradition and technology with the Cypriot wine industry to rank 50th in the world in terms of total production.

There are 52 recognized wineries and lots of smaller mainly for house production, as the wine industry is a significant contributor to the Cypriot economy through cultivation, production, employment, export and tourism, as the climate allows for cultivation of most grape varieties. However local varietals (Mavro and Xynisteri) constitute the majority of current plantations. 

Three wine lovers, Viktoria Solte, Natale Mastoroudes and Georgia Sofroniou, over a glass of wine, or two… created, The Cyprus Wine Club an open group for local and  international people who meet regularly and share their joint passions for both wine and Cyprus.

Viktoria hails from Hungary, Natale is Cypriot South African and Georgia is Cypriot - and given that all of three of these countries have a firm tradition in wine making that might go towards explaining their love of wine. 

Over a glass of wine in one of their recent events I had the pleasure to seat down with them and ask them a few things:

How, when and why you came up with the idea to create a wine club, what is the purpose/aim?
We started first with the idea for Wine Wednesdays just as you would think it would - over a glass of wine at one of our regular haunts. We decided that weekends are much too far apart and that the best way to break up a busy work week would be over a nice glass of wine with good friends, and some nice relaxing music that would allow for banter and easy conversation.

In all fairness we were simply putting a name to something we'd already been doing for a few months. But as we warmed up to the idea, we decided to take the Wine Wednesdays a step further. We love local wines and have spent many a happy weekend visiting independent wineries in the villages around Limassol, "tasting" the local produce. 

We are not what you would call wine connoisseurs, but we certainly grew to know what we like. After all, practice makes perfect! So how great would it be, we thought, if we could get local wine producers to come and present their wines to us and our friends, allowing for regular wine tasting evenings? And that is how the Wine Club was born in September 2014. Once the idea got in our heads, the rest was simply a matter of getting in touch with the right people and logistics. 

How often do you meet? 
We now hold regular Wine Wednesday evenings on the first Wednesday of every month. Each event is hosted by us at a location to be determined and communicated through our website and facebook group. It includes a small presentation of local wines by the wine makers themselves and a wine tasting of the featured wines. There is also the opportunity to buy any of the featured wines that appeal to you, directly from the producer. Our Wine Club also offers a monthly wine tour to independent wineries around Cyprus. 

How would you describe the wine in Cyprus? 
Blooming, developing and can very easily compete with any international wine. 

Do we have a wine culture in Cyprus? 
Of course, world's oldest named wine still in production is the Commandaria, we have more than 52 wineries, we export a great amount of wines some of them awarded with many prestigious awards.