Best Athens Wine Tasting Tours (2026): 4 Top-Rated Experiences Compared

An Athens wine tasting costs €35 to €58 for a 90 minute seated session with five or six Greek wines and something to eat alongside them. That is the standard product, and it is worth knowing up front because searching for an Athens wine tour suggests something the city mostly does not sell: a walk between wine bars. Of the four best-reviewed options here, three are seated tastings at a single venue and one is a four hour food tour that happens to include a sommelier-led tasting.

What you are really paying for is grape access. Greece grows several hundred indigenous varieties and exports comparatively few of them, so a Greek wine tasting in Athens is the most efficient way to meet Assyrtiko, Malagousia, Moschofilero, Savatiano, Agiorgitiko and Xinomavro in one sitting. Most tastings are led by a sommelier or certified wine expert, and the pours are drawn from Greece's PDO and PGI appellations rather than supermarket labels. That is what separates a booked wine experience in Athens from ordering a carafe of house white: someone tells you what is in the glass and why it tastes the way it does.

Below we compare the four on price, wines poured, format and what is actually on the plate, then cover the Greek grapes worth knowing, the truth about retsina, and the vineyards on Athens' own doorstep. If you are pairing this with other eating and drinking, our guides to Athens food tours and Athens cooking classes cover the rest of the city's table.

Three of these four do the same thing at a similar price, so the choice is less about quality than about what you want the ninety minutes to be. The fourth is a different product entirely.

Greece grows a few hundred indigenous varieties and exports relatively few, which is why a tasting here is worth more than it would be in a country whose wines you can buy at home. These are the ones that turn up most.

Assyrtiko

The flagship white, originally from Santorini's volcanic soils and now planted across the country. Lean, high in acid and strikingly mineral, with citrus fruit and a saline edge. Unusually for a white, it ages for years, developing nutty and honeyed notes.

Malagousia

A revival story: effectively extinct by the mid twentieth century and brought back by Greek winemakers. Softer and more perfumed than Assyrtiko, with peach, citrus blossom and a herbal, faintly spicy character.

Moschofilero

Pink skinned and intensely aromatic, from the high Mantinia plateau in the Peloponnese. Rose petal and jasmine on the nose, low in alcohol and high in acidity. The most floral wine on most tasting flights.

Savatiano

Greece's most planted grape and the backbone of Attica, the region on Athens' own doorstep. Long dismissed as bulk material for retsina, it is now the centre of a serious quality revival, giving citrus and green apple in its fresh form and honeyed, almond notes when old vines and oak get involved.

Agiorgitiko

The country's most planted red, from Nemea in the Peloponnese. The name means Saint George's grape. Deep coloured with soft tannins and dark plum and cherry fruit, ranging from light rosé to age worthy reds depending on where on the slope it grew.

Xinomavro

Northern Greece's answer to Nebbiolo: pale in the glass but fiercely tannic and high in acid, with a signature dried tomato aroma alongside olive and dried fruit. It rewards patience and divides tasting groups more than any other Greek red.

Our take (what to buy afterwards): The wines hardest to find outside Greece are the ones worth carrying home, which usually means Xinomavro, old vine Savatiano and anything from a small Attica producer. Assyrtiko has become widely exported and is the easiest of these to buy in London or New York, so it is arguably the least urgent bottle in your suitcase.

Most visitors arrive with a fixed opinion of retsina formed by a cheap carafe somewhere, and it is worth setting that aside. Retsina is wine fermented with resin from the Aleppo pine, a practice descended from the ancient habit of sealing amphorae with pine resin, which flavoured the wine inside. It is not a grape or a region but a method, and Greek law treats it as an Appellation by Tradition with EU protected status, so only Greek resinated wine can carry the name.

The rules are tighter than the reputation suggests. Under the PGI Retsina of Attiki designation the wine must be at least 85 percent Savatiano, with Roditis permitted alongside, and resin is capped at 10 grams per litre. The bad reputation came from bulk blends that used heavy handed resin to mask tired fruit. Modern producers use a fraction of the permitted resin over properly made wine, which reads as a pine and herb lift rather than turpentine.

The bottling most often credited with changing minds is Kechris Tear of the Pine, made from oak aged Assyrtiko rather than the traditional Savatiano. Several Attica producers including Papagiannakos, Mylonas and Markou are part of the same revival. If a tasting offers you one, it is usually the most interesting glass on the table, precisely because it is nothing like the version you are bracing for.

Athens is one of the very few European capitals with commercial vineyards roughly half an hour from its centre. Drive east across the Mesogeia plain toward the airport and you are in Attica, Greece's largest wine region by planted area, taking in Markopoulo, Koropi, Peania, Spata, Keratea and Kalyvia. Savatiano accounts for around 90 percent of what grows there.

Five estates run a visitor trail under the Wines of Athens banner: Domaine Papagiannakos in Markopoulo, which was Greece's first bioclimatic winery, Mylonas in Keratea, founded in 1917 and now making everything from old vine Savatiano to a pet nat, Markou Vineyards in Peania, Kokotou Estate at Stamata north of the city, and Anastasia Fragou. Attica is a PGI rather than a PDO region, so you will see PGI Attiki on the labels.

If you are weighing it against the other big excursions, a Meteora day tour from Athens is a far longer commitment at roughly 14 hours. For a proper red wine day, Nemea in the northeastern Peloponnese is about 90 minutes away and is where Agiorgitiko comes from, nicknamed the Blood of Hercules after the lion he killed nearby. Altitude does most of the work there: valley floor vineyards at 300 to 450 metres give soft early drinking wines, while the Asprokambos plateau at 600 to 900 metres gives structured bottles built to age. Semeli, Skouras, Gaia, Lafkiotis and Palivou all receive visitors, and tasting fees run about €8 to €15, often deducted if you buy.

Our take (before you drive out): Greek wineries are family businesses rather than walk in cellar doors, and several sources are explicit that very few Attica estates accept visitors without notice. Email or call two or three days ahead and reconfirm the day before. The other reason to let someone else drive is the law: Greece sets its limit at 0.05 percent blood alcohol, and between 0.80 and 1.10 the penalty is €700 and a 90 day licence ban.

A tasting gives you the grape names. The wine bars are where you use them, and Athens has a genuinely good scene that most visitors never find because it sits away from the Plaka tourist strip. Ask your host for their own shortlist as well, since they will know what has opened recently, but these three are the reliable starting points.

Heteroclito

On Petraki, a pedestrian street opposite the Mitropoli cathedral, and the one to go to if you want to stay entirely in Greek wine. Around 200 Greek labels with roughly 20 open by the glass, served with Greek cheeses, dried fruit and homemade pies in a small bistro room. The by-the-glass list is the point here: it is the cheapest way to keep tasting your way through varieties you met earlier in the evening.

Oinoscent

On Voulis, open since 2008 and generally credited with starting the modern Athens wine bar scene. The list runs past 700 wines and is international rather than Greek only, so this is where to go if you want to put an Assyrtiko next to a Chablis, or simply want the deepest list in the city. Run with an award-winning sommelier on the floor.

Materia Prima

In Koukaki near the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the most adventurous of the three. Twenty-plus rotating wines by the glass, weighted toward small Greek producers and minimal-intervention bottles you will not see on restaurant lists. Worth it if the tasting left you curious about who is making wine in Greece now rather than which grapes are traditional.

Two others worth knowing: Warehouse in Exarcheia, the original of a small group and a good late option, and Paleo Wine Store, which is a shop and bar with hundreds of Greek labels. Note that Paleo is in Piraeus rather than central Athens, so treat it as a destination rather than a nightcap.

A seated Athens wine tasting costs €35 to €58 per person for roughly 90 minutes, five or six Greek wines and food alongside. A premium food tour with a sommelier-led wine segment and a sit-down dinner runs €159. Out at the wineries, tasting fees are charged separately and run about €8 to €15 in Nemea, often deducted from the price if you buy a bottle.

• Book it early in your trip, not at the end. Five grape names and a sommelier's shortlist of bars will shape every meal that follows. Most venues also sell what they pour and will happily point you elsewhere.
• Check for the word rooftop, not the word Acropolis. Under the Acropolis describes a neighbourhood covering most of Thiseio and Makrygianni. Only one of the four tastings here actually looks at the rock.
• Bring photo identification. All four are 18 plus and at least one operator states that valid photo ID is required at the door.
• Give retsina a fair hearing. If a modern one is poured, it will be nothing like the bulk version that gave it its reputation, and it is usually the most interesting glass of the session.
• Do not drive to the wineries after tasting. Greece sets its drink drive limit at 0.05 percent, lower than the United States, with a €700 fine and a 90 day ban in the 0.80 to 1.10 band. Take a guided trip or nominate a driver.
• Contact Attica wineries well ahead. These are family estates rather than walk in cellar doors, and very few accept visitors without an appointment. Email two or three days ahead and reconfirm the day before.
• Aim for spring or early autumn if the vineyards are the point. April to June and September to October are the comfortable months. Harvest from late August into October is atmospheric but the wineries are genuinely working, and many estates close or go appointment only through winter.
• Do not eat a full meal first, and do not treat it as dinner either. The pours are generous rather than thimble-sized and the pairings keep coming, so arriving very full is a waste. Guests regularly stay on afterwards for a cheese and charcuterie plate, which is the natural way to turn ninety minutes into an evening.
• Say if you have a dietary restriction when you book. These are small kitchens plating a fixed sequence of bites, so advance notice is what makes substitutions possible. At least one guest reports a gluten allergy being accommodated without fuss.
• Say how much you already know. Hosts pitch the session to the room, and guests report being taken deeper when they asked. If you already drink seriously, say so at the start rather than sitting through the beginner version, which is the one mild criticism that surfaces in reviews.