The Cinque Journal / The Greek Wine Journey
FROM THE ARCHIVE · MAY 2025
Meet the Winemaker: Wine, People and Stories at Cinque
A look back at an evening that brought a Mantinia winemaker and her wines to the table.
Published 2025-05-29 · Cinque — The Greek Wine Journey
IN THIS ARTICLE
Wine becomes easier to understand when we meet the people who make it. In 2025, Cinque’s Meet the Winemaker evening invited guests to hear a producer’s story directly, taste her wines and share the experience around a table.
An experience built around conversation
The idea behind Meet the Winemaker was to create space for questions alongside the tasting. Guests could hear about vineyards, grape varieties and the choices made in the winery, then relate those stories to what they found in the glass.
Food pairings gave the wines another context. The planned format brought four wines and four dishes together over the course of the evening, inviting guests to follow the tasting at a comfortable pace.
Vervenioti Wines from Mantinia
The first featured producer was Vervenioti Wines from Mantinia, a winery led by a woman and rooted in its region. The event introduced guests to the winery’s approach and to Moschofilero, the aromatic variety so closely associated with Mantinia.
It was an opportunity to move beyond a label: to meet a person, listen to her account of a place and taste the wines with that context in mind.
The May 2025 gathering
The original Cinque event took place at Monastiraki on Thursday, 15 May 2025. The published invitation described a four-course wine and food experience in a small group. Those details belong to the 2025 event and are preserved here as part of our archive.
What stays with us is the value of direct contact between a producer and the people tasting her wines.
Looking ahead
Meet the Winemaker showed how a wine presentation can make room for both knowledge and hospitality. As Cinque considers future events, this story remains a useful starting point: begin with the wine, invite the person behind it and let the conversation grow.