🍷 Wine, Spirits & Drinking Culture
A note on the Kaufmann Wine Score: this chapter does not publish a separate territory score for Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The boundary of a Sovereign Base Area does not by itself create a distinct wine region: the vines, agricultural holdings, tavernas and bottles encountered here belong to the wider Cypriot wine landscape. We have not established an exhaustive, current inventory of producers inside the base boundaries, so the absence of a score must not be read as proof that no winery or bottling activity exists. For individual wines, regions and the island’s Kaufmann Wine Score, continue to the Cyprus page. The following account provides the cultural context for what you may find in your glass here.
That said, the SBAs sit inside one of the oldest wine landscapes on Earth, and it would be perverse not to explain what is in your glass.
Commandaria. The sweet amber wine made from sun-dried Xynisteri and Mavro grapes in fourteen villages on the southern Troodos slopes — a short drive north of Episkopi — has a serious claim to being the oldest named wine still in production anywhere. The Knights of St John made it at Kolossi Castle, ten minutes from the base gate, and Richard the Lionheart is said to have called it "the wine of kings and the king of wines" at his wedding in Limassol in 1191. It is a PDO wine, aged oxidatively, and it tastes of raisin, carob, orange peel and old wood.
Xynisteri is the island's fine indigenous white — citrus, stone fruit, saline at altitude. Maratheftiko is the serious indigenous red, dark and structured, difficult to grow because it does not self-pollinate. Mavro is the workhorse. The regional revival since the 2000s has been genuine, and the best small estates in the Krasochoria above Limassol now bear comparison with good southern Rhône or Sicilian producers.
Zivania is the spirit: a clear grape distillate of 45% and upwards, traditionally distilled from pomace and local wine, drunk cold and neat with meze in winter. The Anama Concept's double-distilled Ousia — made from sun-dried, lightly smoked grapes and, in one bottling, aged in Anama casks — is the most interesting expression on the island right now.
Beer. KEO and Leon are both brewed in Limassol, within sight of the peninsula; both are clean, cold lagers designed for 36°C afternoons. Inside the bases, the NAAFI and the messes stock British ales and ciders that are otherwise near-impossible to find on Cyprus — a small cultural export that base employees have quietly enjoyed for seventy years.
Duty rules are worth knowing: the SBAs apply EU customs arrangements on behalf of the resident population, so there is no duty-free arbitrage to be had by driving in. Alcohol prices in the villages are Cypriot prices, which is to say cheap.
