I’ll Find My Way Home — The Women Winemakers Leading a Cretan Wine Revolution
Sweat pours from my brow under the blaze of a Cretan heat wave. My only respite is an occasional breeze from the brilliant green-blue horizon where sea meets sky from behind spindly cypress trees, creeping in and out of view as I ride over rolling hills on an undersized Fuji hybrid that’s no match for this job. Without a car, a three-and-a-half-hour bicycle journey in the 35-degree mid-afternoon sun is the only way to get to Domaine Paterianakis—but it’s worth every hot, sticky pedal stroke.
The winery is perched atop a hill outside the capital city of Iráklion: open, airy, and light-filled, overlooking a sweeping vista that remains verdant despite the browning heat. It’s run by Emmanouela Paterianaki, the winemaker, and her sister Niki, who manages operations, following in the footsteps of their father and grandfather. They’re part of a new generation driving a revival in Cretan wine. Female-headed wineries are taking the lead, and as Emmanouela tells me, “things are different when the women are in charge.”
You can taste it in the glass; nuanced and complex, beauty persisting through centuries of drought and struggle; rich minerality borne by tiny roots through layers of dense loam. Both masculine and feminine energies are expressed in nature, our bodies, and the things we create, but to me, Crete’s male-run wineries don't feel the same. The female owners I met bring broad, inclusive visions that encompass art, culture, conservation, and connection—sharing the legacies of not only their families but the heart of the people and this beautiful, bountiful place that beckons across centuries.
Winemaking here dates back 4,000 years to the Minoan civilization, renowned in ancient times; the world’s oldest known wine press is outside the palatial ruins at Knossos. The diverse microclimate, with its range of altitudes and atmospheric conditions, yields 12 indigenous grape varieties with just as much character and depth as anything from France or Italy, yet it hasn’t historically gotten the credit—despite the fact that wine’s very origins are in places like modern-day Greece, Georgia, and Turkey.
The abundant island attracted waves of conquerors, from the Romans in 69 B.C. to the once-autonomous state’s 1913 union with Greece, but all-inclusive tourists were the invaders who perhaps most impacted the wine industry. In the 1980s, says Markus Stolz—a Greek wine insider and exporter who has lived in Greece for nearly 20 years—producers began over-pruning and cutting corners to compete with impossibly cheap resort pricing, and the global reputation of Greek wines plummeted.
Later in the decade, progressive winemakers refocused on quality and traditional methods, emphasising local grapes. Counter to cultural norms, some handed their wineries down to their daughters, bringing needed perspective to a historically patriarchal industry.
Illustrations by Hannah Lock
Women have worked in Cretan vineyards since Minoan times. “They did a lot of jobs you couldn't see,” Emmanouela says: agricultural tasks such as sorting, destemming, draining, and making raisins that had less visibility than viticulture or winemaking, but were equally essential. This is still often true today, yet “women are starting to understand our real role,” she adds.
Evie Dourakis manages and co-owns Dourakis Winery, near the bustling port city of Chania, alongside her brother and winemaker, Antonis, and father, Andreas. She works ceaselessly to oversee everything from marketing and design to administration and events. “So many women like me run so much of the business, hire the staff, plan the tastings, make the appointments, run the restaurant, do social media, and are part of the winemaking engine,” Evie says. “They’re small parts, but it’s a big thing.”
The female perspective diverges on everything from aesthetics to advertising, she observes: “Men say we overthink things, but I think this helps more,” citing cultural elements such as dining, art exhibitions, and Dourakis’ onsite museum and gallery, which she helped launch. They must also combat stereotypes such as marketing rosé strictly to women.
“It’s still very difficult,” Evie says, “but in the last 10 years, there are more women [in the industry], and we’re really trying to make them see our perspective.”
The current generation studied and lived abroad, she adds, bringing sustainable practices, new winemaking technologies, and cosmopolitan sensibilities with them. They’ve driven rebrands that create a “sense of place,” turning wineries into destinations, much like taprooms at breweries and cideries have done in towns and cities all over the world.
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Artist and architect Alexandra Manousakis never intended to get into the wine business; she came to Crete to remodel houses. When her father invited her to redesign Manousakis Winery, which sprawls across sun-dappled fields amid whispering orange and avocado groves outside Chania, she fell in love with both wine and the place and is now co-owner.
When Alexandra arrived, there wasn’t even internet service. Today, she draws crowds to the light-filled tasting terrace she designed through a strong social media presence and involvement in the local food and art scene. She tapped her husband, chef and sommelier Afshin Molavi, to create the on-site restaurant and menu, where guests eat from ceramicware she makes. The winery used to export 80% of its wine; now it’s 8%, because “we want people to enjoy it where it’s made,” Alexandra says.
Her father left Crete at age 11 for America, returning after raising a business and family to retrace his roots through wine. Similarly, Alexandra left a high-powered, soul-sucking job in Manhattan real estate pursuing creativity and her Cretan heritage. Manousakis’ flagship series is called “Nostos,” the Greek root for “nostalgia,” meaning “yearning to come home,” and the labels she designs evoke the local landscape and her father’s childhood.
“[Crete has] this pull,” Alexandra says. “I was supposed to come here for one year. Fifteen years later, it’s a done deal.”
““Things are different when the women are in charge.””
These owners bring an approach that is not necessarily gendered, but divinely feminine: cyclical and reciprocal, looking to the future, with a whole-ecosystem view. Paterianakis follows biodynamic viticulture practices, chemical-free and low-intervention; agricultural activities like planting, harvesting, and pruning are guided by moon cycles.
“What nature wants is what you get,” Niki says. Their grandfather, who founded the winery, was the first organic winemaker in Crete, and Paterianakis has been certified organic for 25 years.
Their flagship wine is “3.14,” denoting that three women and one man run the winery: the sisters, their mother, and their father, adding to four. The name also represents pi, the infinite decimal. “Nature,” Niki says, “starts and finishes at the same point.”
On the largest island in Greece, people have followed conservationist practices for millennia. Locals call it “the tradition with no name”; today, it’s organic, natural, and biodynamic winemaking; an agricultural, ecological, and spiritual approach that treats the vineyard as a living thing composed of interdependent parts. Historically, many producers didn’t or couldn’t undergo the often-onerous certification process accompanying these labels. This began shifting under 2013 incentives from the European Union.
“The important thing is to do it holistically,” Emmanouela says, with “not just one organic wine, but a philosophy in all your production.”
At Dourakis, nestled at the bottom of a mountainous region where the microclimate lends itself to going underground, Evie has championed the expansion of the cellar program, which conserves energy by maximising equipment-usage efficiency. The space runs on 80% solar power, and they offer certified organic wines, in keeping with her father’s principles.
Manousakis has been organic and low-intervention since being conceived in 1984, the same year I was; its vineyard team works vine by vine, mostly by hand, following the “mosaic” farming method. All wines except the rosé are unfiltered, clarified through temperature stabilisation rather than energy-intensive additions. Alexandra builds upon her father’s conservationist legacy, from sustainable cultivation to choosing “less presentable” lighter bottles to conserve energy in transport.
“It's important that we are not stripping the land of anything [or] having a negative impact on what's around us,” Alexandra says, “because we came back here to do something positive.”
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Elegant and refined, Cretan wines are born of mineral-rich soil that preserves humidity, important for low-intervention producers who don't irrigate. The whites and rosés are savoury and herbaceous with dry, crisp character; reds are soft yet supple, slightly juicy and sometimes spicy, the counterpoint to the big, bold, tannin-bombs of my native Washington state. Wineries champion indigenous varieties, such as the Vidiano—which Emmanouela calls “the diva” of Cretan grapes,” boasting stone fruits, herbs, and a creamy mouthfeel—and the Muscat of Spina, citrusy and sweeter, yet complex.
When making Paterianakis’ wines, Emmanouela focuses on varieties that are “more tasteful and healthy, not like the big, fatty wines that [require] so much food,” she says. They’re “fresh wines”: young and bright, in resonance with the local climate: the last thing I want after my scorching bike ride is a mouth-puckering red.
Indeed, these owners say the feminine perspective brings subtlety, nuance, and a collaborative spirit to an industry often led by the loudest. According to Emmanouela, “[Women] look more for finesse.”
Noting broad individual variation, Alexandra says, “I do think that women are a bit more nurturing, understanding, and willing to listen, even in the way they do business.”
When their father was in charge, Niki recalls, the sheep from a nearby farm would graze upon the grapes, causing conflicts with the farmer. But the sisters sought a compromise: if the farmer could agree to limit the grazing, they would serve and sell his sheeps’ cheese at the winery. The creamy, earthy flavour of the cheese infused with the sweetness of their grapes creates a truly remarkable pairing.
““At the end of the day, you have to put your ego aside. You’re not going to change the way these men think.””
Yet the Greek wine industry still adheres to old boys’ principles like “show respect, get respect,” Emmanouela says. “It’s not easy for people in Crete to say that a female knows how to do it. If they see your hands dirty with grapes or dust, you work as hard as they work, and you respect them, they show you respect, but it needs time.”
When she started, “It was a world of culture clashes,” Alexandra tells me. “To everyone, I was a little girl … playing with Daddy’s winery.” Even now, when she asks questions in meetings, people will often answer Afshin, who redirects them. “At the end of the day, you have to put your ego aside. You’re not going to change the way these men think.”
But maybe they don’t have to, because they’re changing patriarchal traditions from within. “The incredibly talented women who are showing up for their businesses and [each other] is helping facilitate this change,” Alexandra adds.
Besides, the owners emphasise a collaborative path, not only across wineries but genders and roles. “When working as a team, we can gain a lot more individually,” Evie says. “We have learned over the past 15 years, and the wines have improved so much.”
Yet it’s also been a process of remembering, resurrecting varieties and methods; the stories of fathers and grandfathers as they strolled, side by side, through the vines. After all, that’s how the women do things: communally and creatively, bringing everything back to the start.
