On Santorini's volcanic ash — a soil in which phylloxera cannot live — assyrtiko grows ungrafted, on its own roots. Against the Aegean wind the vines are woven into ground-hugging baskets called kouloura, the grapes ripening inside the coil; yields are among the lowest of any vineyard on earth, and the wine is correspondingly dense.
The island keeps its old styles: nykteri, traditionally harvested and pressed by night to escape the heat, and vinsanto, the sun-dried sweet wine that was for centuries Santorini's great export. The dry wine is the modern flag: lemon and flint, sea spray, a saline finish that tastes of the caldera. Antiquity you can pour.