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Chris Kontos has opened a pure wine bar in Athens. That is huge information within the Greek capital, as a result of no matter challenge Kontos undertakes is outwardly a measure of the place the town is heading, culturally talking. His pictures is partly answerable for shaping the picture of “New Athens”: complicated, chaotic, magical. He’s additionally the founding father of Kennedy Journal, a biannual journal bought from Tokyo to New York, a DJ and, as of October, the proprietor of Kennedy Vins, a wine and listening bar within the downtown space.
“That is probably the most rewarding factor I’ve executed,” Kontos tells me within the weeks earlier than its opening, empty wine bins piled haphazardly behind him. “I felt so proud placing the bottles on the cabinets. This place goes to be an extension of me: the wines I like and the music I wish to hearken to.”
I first met Kontos three years in the past after I was writing a narrative about Athens’ rebetika music – folks sounds of the Greek underworld which have lately turn out to be fashionable – and wanted route. Even then, he had a status as a contemporary George Katsimbalis, the late Athenian editor immortalised because the Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. Kontos knew all one of the best addresses, amongst them wine bars like Oinoscent and Heteroclito close to Syntagma Sq., which opened in 2012 and is, apparently, “the place that made Greek wine related”. Immediately these bars have been joined by a brand new era of bar homeowners and sommeliers, who collectively have made pure wine a broadly accessible proposition.
“Beforehand, the status of wine in Greece was that it was low cost and for getting drunk on the taverna,” says Kontos. “I now see younger individuals going out for wine, or for a meal with their favorite wines, as a substitute of the cocktail bars. This was by no means earlier than a factor in Athens.”
It is because, not like in Paris or London, Athenian wine bars are extra neighbourhood hangouts, not only for the connoisseur. Among the many revellers are the town’s reply to beanie-wearing creatives (whisper it: hipsters) – many of their 30s or 40s – plus college students, older aficionados and a flourishing era of Greeks returning house after the monetary disaster. The latter are chiming with Athens’ renaissance in arts and eating, impressed by the town’s resilience, a steadily enhancing financial system and a rising expat neighborhood that has been lured to the town for its affordability and entrepreneurial spirit.
And so the preferred bars have thrived as after-hours neighborhood outposts to satisfy, gossip, do enterprise, flirt and play. The decor is usually fashionable and smooth, drawing from the Parisian pure wine scene (many homeowners, together with Kontos, had their formative wine experiences in Paris). However there are sometimes nods to kafenion, conventional Greek espresso homes, too: low seating, scattered crops and rustic stained partitions.
Even in the course of winter, revellers spill out into the road if house is scarce: it’s nonetheless delicate sufficient to take a seat out, and the daytime shouldn’t be so punishingly scorching. The scene is numerous. And since lots of the bar homeowners have lived overseas, there’s a wealth of influences. A couple of, like Kontos, give attention to overseas pure wines; others champion Greek producers. Some openings additionally reveal how Athenian neighbourhoods are altering. The most well-liked bars stretch from Epta Martyres in Neos Kosmos to Materia Prima in bohemian Pangrati. Gamay and Tanini Agapi Mou are each in various Exarchia – a district beforehand related to anarchism.
The expansion has led to a thriving neighborhood: lots of the homeowners, sommeliers and producers are actually associates and collaborators. “We ought to be supporting one another,” says Kontos. “We’re distinctive in our personal methods.” I meet with Vasileios Bakasis, director of Gallina, a restaurant that has brought about a cheerful commotion within the metropolis. “They don’t simply have one of the best wine checklist in Athens, however in Europe,” Kontos insists. Based mostly close to the Acropolis, it serves fashionable and conventional dishes for as much as 60 company – usually creatives and enterprise varieties – alongside a uncommon assortment of latest Greek artwork and custom-made marble furnishings. Bakasis jogs my memory that Athens’ hottest eating places are actually “gastrokafenio”, a combination between bistros and conventional tavernas. Many prioritise high quality wines, and Gallina even has a wine director.
Essentially the most identifiable pioneers of this motion in Athens are themselves French: Thomas Brengou and Rafael Wallon-Brownstone from the rightfully fashionable Wine is Effective. Their bar on the nook of Vissis Avenue transports one to the Marais with an elegant crowd, a few of them expats, spilling into the slim roads. “We’re severe in regards to the meals,” says Brengou, whose menu of Gallic-inspired classics is ready by co-founder and chef Stavros Chrysafidis. “Raf and I are from Paris, the place there are thousands and thousands of wine bars with completely different identities: that’s what we wish to see in Athens. It was extra conventional after we arrived. Now we discover younger skate boarders and fancy individuals beside each other.”
Kontos additionally introduces me to the colorful Nikolaos Symeonidis, the person behind the @habiba.wine Instagram account (and a part-time mannequin for Lemaire). Symeonidis makes his personal wine beneath the Hotline 33744812190 label, organises events round Athens with largely German pure wines, and lately took a residency on the Mona resort. “Athens is multisensory, and so is the scene,” he tells me. “Music and wine go collectively. It’s thrilling as a result of it feels new, and unrestricted by the traditions of different locations.”
Subsequent yr, Symeonidis will open a bottle store within the metropolis known as Hotline; he additionally intends to start out a global wine honest with different bar homeowners. “Pure wine permits us to behave consciously, create a tradition, and hopefully encourage the following era of Greeks,” he says. “We must always all come collectively. I might be completely satisfied if Athens had tons of of recent wine bars.”
Kennedy Vins is now open, and shows a mosaic of tasteful concepts from Kontos’s travels all over the world, however particularly France and Japan. “I needed it to have the practicality of Japanese areas,” he says. Snacks – charcuterie, canned fish and bread for mopping up oil – are served on Service Tasks plates together with his Kennedy brand. There’s a room on the again the place Kontos will conduct “listening periods” utilizing high-end audio gear (his vinyl cartridge prices €4,000 alone).
Each Athenians and travellers cease by. Within the winter low season, when the bustle of tourism has slowed down just a little, the town’s wine bars thrive as cosy warrens for leisure and seasonal eating. However it’s the stirring Greek filoxenia (hospitality to strangers) that makes the neighborhood so accessible and explains why these bars have gotten the centrepiece of Athenian social life for vacationers in addition to locals. “I would like anybody who comes right here to really feel at house,” Kontos says lastly. “Not simply Athenians.”
