Last year, the debuting Messinia Terroirs Wine Festival was a great success. Now, with its upcomingsecond edition, it’s on its way to become a vibrant annual institution planting new roots in Messinia’s fabled wineland.
The 2024 Messinia Terroirs Wine Festival, to be held at the Navarino Agora June 14-16, will be a celebration of taste and flavor, showcasing Messinia’s wine-growing diversity. Visitors will have the opportunity to discover local treasures and share in visionary insights and perspectives for the region’s sustained revival.
The festival is the flagship event of the Messinia Terroirs project, an initiative of the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation, which aims to promote Messinia’s age-old winemaking tradition and breathe new life into a wine country steeped in history and lore.
Besides wine presentation and tasting events, the three-day festival will feature master classes for professionals and wine lovers, seminars and panel discussions, producer updates, dance performances, live music, wine-painting workshops, and exciting art activities for children and adults.
To further enhance the experience, all Navarino Agora shops, deli stands, and dining venues will offer special deals, dedicated menus, and select samplings of local delicacies that best pair with local wines.
The festival is organized under the auspices of the Messinia Chamber of Commerce, the Pylos-Nestor Municipality, the Wine Producers Association of the Peloponnese Vineyard (ENOAP), and the National Interprofessional Organization of Vine and Wine (EDOAO).
The event’s main sponsor is Costa Navarino. The Cellier store in Navarino Agora is credited for promoting the local winemaking community and organizing their tasting events.
For the detailed festival program Click here
Contact Details:
Τ/ 27230 28353
W/ www.cvf.gr
Registrations of participation:
The number of participations in the special events is limited.
Registration is required to enter the W Costa Navarino Hotel. Your name will be on the hotel gate / entrance for your access.
Children under the age of 12 are NOT allowed to enter the W Costa Navarino Hotel.
Messinia Terroirs
The Messinia Terroirs project is an initiative of the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation, a public benefit non-profit established in 2011. The foundation is committed to making Messinia a model for sustainable rural development by supporting and promoting forward-looking strategies.
The project’s objective is to invigorate the local grape and wine industry, restore its former glory, and highlight the richness and diversity of Messinia’s terroirs. These blessed micro-environments along with the region’s stunning pastoral beauty, storied cultural heritage, and fine culinary tradition, provide the groundwork for establishing legendary Messinia as a wineland with a distinct identity and a world-class oenophile destination.
Messinia: Wine and History
The history of vineyard-rich Messinia is forever entwined with the legends, traditions, and values of centuries-old viticulture and winemaking.
Ancient Messinian cities decorated their coins with a grape bunch motif or the figure of Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry. The lyric poet Alcman speaks of the celebrated Denthi wine, which was produced on the Messinian slopes of Mount Taygetus, while Pausanias, the great Greek travel writer of the second century AD, notes that Mount Eva, in the heart of Messinia, took her name from the Bacchic exclamation euoi (eviva). The Linear B inscriptions on clay tablets—the earliest known form of written Greek, unearthed from the Mycenaean palace in Pylos alongside drinking cups and storage vessels, attest to the importance of wine in the local economy since the Bronze Age.
As the centuries went by, Messinia enjoyed a reputation for excellence in viticulture and winemaking. Despite the devastation of the region’s vineyards during the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, the recovery didn’t take long. The phylloxera epidemic, which ravaged the vines of Europe in the mid-19th century, boosted Messinia’s exports of wine and raisin, the latter being the top export product of the nascent Greek state.
By the end of the 1920s, Messinia ranked among the country’s top wine-producing regions. In 1954, local winegrowers joined forces to launch the Nestor cooperative for gathering, standardizing, and marketing Messinia’s grape production. In the early 1980s, parts of the Messinia vineyard land were planted with international grape varieties, introducing Greeks to locally grown Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The latter, cultivated in select vineyards in upland Trifylia, has gained worldwide recognition for its exquisite taste and distinct character.
Today, viticulture and winemaking continue to play a significant role in the life of Messinia. They are an integral part of its history, economy, and culture, and a key driver for its future growth.