the coolest wine scene in Europe?

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Chris Kontos has opened a natural wine bar in Athens. This is big news in the Greek capital, because whatever project Kontos undertakes is apparently a measure of where the city is heading, culturally speaking. His photography is partly responsible for shaping the image of “New Athens”: confusing, chaotic, magical. He is also the founder of Kennedy Magazine, a biannual journal sold from Tokyo to New York, a DJ and, as of October, the owner of Kennedy Vins, a wine and listening bar in the downtown area. 

“This is the most rewarding thing I’ve done,” Kontos tells me in the weeks before its opening, empty wine boxes piled haphazardly behind him. “I felt so proud putting the bottles on the shelves. This place is going to be an extension of me: the wines I like and the music I want to listen to.”

I first met Kontos three years ago when I was writing a story about Athens’ rebetika music – folk sounds of the Greek underworld that have recently become popular – and needed direction. Even then, he had a reputation as a modern George Katsimbalis, the late Athenian editor immortalised as the Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. Kontos knew all the best addresses, among them wine bars like Oinoscent and Heteroclito near Syntagma Square, which opened in 2012 and is, apparently, “the place that made Greek wine relevant”. Today those bars have been joined by a new generation of bar owners and sommeliers, who together have made natural wine a widely accessible proposition.

“Previously, the reputation of wine in Greece was that it was cheap and for getting drunk at the taverna,” says Kontos. “I now see young people going out for wine, or for a meal with their favourite wines, instead of the cocktail bars. This was never before a thing in Athens.” 

This is because, unlike in Paris or London, Athenian wine bars are more neighbourhood hangouts, not just for the connoisseur. Among the revellers are the city’s answer to beanie-wearing creatives (whisper it: hipsters) – many in their 30s or 40s – plus students, older aficionados and a flourishing generation of Greeks returning home after the financial crisis. The latter are chiming with Athens’ renaissance in arts and dining, inspired by the city’s resilience, a gradually improving economy and a growing expat community that has been lured to the city for its affordability and entrepreneurial spirit. 

And so the most popular bars have thrived as after-hours community outposts to meet, gossip, do business, flirt and play. The decor is generally modern and sleek, drawing from the Parisian natural wine scene (many owners, including Kontos, had their formative wine experiences in Paris). But there are often nods to kafenion, traditional Greek coffee houses, too: low seating, scattered plants and rustic stained walls. 

Even in the middle of winter, revellers spill out into the street if space is scarce: it’s still mild enough to sit out, and the daytime is not so punishingly hot. The scene is diverse. And because many of the bar owners have lived abroad, there’s a wealth of influences. A few, like Kontos, focus on foreign natural wines; others champion Greek producers. Some openings also reveal how Athenian neighbourhoods are changing. The most popular bars stretch from Epta Martyres in Neos Kosmos to Materia Prima in bohemian Pangrati. Gamay and Tanini Agapi Mou are both in alternative Exarchia – a district previously associated with anarchism.

The growth has led to a thriving community: many of the owners, sommeliers and producers are now friends and collaborators. “We should be supporting each other,” says Kontos. “We are unique in our own ways.” I meet with Vasileios Bakasis, director of Gallina, a restaurant that has caused a happy commotion in the city. “They don’t just have the best wine list in Athens, but in Europe,” Kontos insists. Based near the Acropolis, it serves modern and traditional dishes for up to 60 guests – generally creatives and business types – alongside a rare collection of contemporary Greek art and custom-made marble furniture. Bakasis reminds me that Athens’ most popular restaurants are now “gastrokafenio”, a mix between bistros and traditional tavernas. Many prioritise quality wines, and Gallina even has a wine director.

The most identifiable pioneers of this movement in Athens are themselves French: Thomas Brengou and Rafael Wallon-Brownstone from the rightfully popular Wine is Fine. Their bar on the corner of Vissis Street transports one to the Marais with a chic crowd, some of them expats, spilling into the narrow roads. “We’re serious about the food,” says Brengou, whose menu of Gallic-inspired classics is prepared by local chef Stavros Chrysafidis. “Raf and I are from Paris, where there are millions of wine bars with different identities: that’s what we want to see in Athens. It was more traditional when we arrived. Now we find young skateboarders and fancy people beside one another.”

Kontos also introduces me to the colourful Nikolaos Symeonidis, the man behind the @habiba.wine Instagram account (and a part-time model for Lemaire). Symeonidis makes his own wine under the Hotline 33744812190 label, organises parties around Athens with mostly German natural wines, and recently took a residency at the Mona hotel. “Athens is multisensory, and so is the scene,” he tells me. “Music and wine go together. It’s exciting because it feels new, and unrestricted by the traditions of other places.” 

Next year, Symeonidis will open a bottle shop in the city called Hotline; he also intends to start an international wine fair with other bar owners. “Natural wine allows us to act consciously, create a culture, and hopefully inspire the next generation of Greeks,” he says. “We should all come together. I would be happy if Athens had hundreds of new wine bars.”

Kennedy Vins is now open, and displays a mosaic of tasteful ideas from Kontos’s travels around the world, but especially France and Japan. “I wanted it to have the practicality of Japanese spaces,” he says. Snacks – charcuterie, canned fish and bread for mopping up oil – are served on Service Projects plates with his Kennedy logo. There is a room at the back where Kontos will conduct “listening sessions” using high-end audio equipment (his vinyl cartridge costs €4,000 alone). 

Both Athenians and travellers stop by. In the winter off-season, when the bustle of tourism has slowed down a little, the city’s wine bars thrive as cosy warrens for entertainment and seasonal dining. But it is the stirring Greek filoxenia (hospitality to strangers) that makes the community so accessible and explains why these bars are becoming the centrepiece of Athenian social life for tourists as well as locals. “I want anyone who comes here to feel at home,” Kontos says finally. “Not just Athenians.”