Commandaria: the world's oldest named wine

Long before Bordeaux had a name, Cyprus had Commandaria. This deep amber dessert wine has been made on the southern slopes of the Troodos for some three thousand years, and it holds a fair claim to being the oldest named wine still in production anywhere on earth.

A wine with a lineage

The name comes from the medieval Commanderie of the Knights, but the wine is far older; ancient writers praised it, and legend has it flowing at a royal wedding when Richard the Lionheart married in Cyprus. To taste it is to drink a little of the island's history.

How it is made

Two local grapes, Xynisteri and Mavro, are left to over-ripen and then sun-dried, concentrating their sugars before a long, patient fermentation and years in oak. The result is rich but not cloying — figs, honey, dried apricot — and it belongs at the end of a meal, with cheese or simply with conversation.

The Commandaria villages and the wider Troodos wine routes make one of the island's loveliest days out. Tell our concierge your taste and we will map a route through the cellars worth visiting.