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By Leslie Gevirtz
NEW YORK, May 17 (Reuters) – Greek winemakers are not
pricing their wares in drachmas – yet.
The winemakers, visiting New York as part of an international
promotional tour, doubted Athens would leave the euro-zone even
after Fitch Ratings Agency downgraded Greece’s sovereign debt on
Thursday, calling the country’s exit from the monetary union
“probable.”
“No, no, no. That is not going to happen,” Stellios
Boutaris, whose family owns the Kir-Yianni winery, insisted.
“And if that happens, we will have bigger problems than just
pricing wine in drachmas.”
Boutaris said he was “a guy who always sees the glass
half-full…There have been so many journalists coming to talk
about Greek wines because they are looking for a positive story
about Greece. And right now, it is.”
Attempts in Greece to form a new government collapsed this
week, jolting the European single currency on prospects Greek
leftists opposed to terms of an EU bailout could win a June
election and the country could exit the euro.
The Greek winemakers in New York ranged from big producers
to boutique vineyards and one-man shops but all said they wanted
Greece to keep the single currency because of the cheaper credit
and relative economic stability it brought before the current
crisis.
Angelos Iatridis, a University of Bordeaux-trained winemaker
who worked harvests in France and Spain before buying his own
vineyard, Alpha Estate, in 1999, thought the euro’s hovering
near its 2012 low of $1.2623 was actually good
for Greek winemakers.
“It’s good for us because we will be able to sell more wine
abroad,” Iatridis said, noting that he exports approximately 45
percent of the 300,000 bottles he produces annually.
“The political situation is not stable right now, but I
believe in the next election (on June 17) that we will have a
much more stable government,” he said.
Credit, or the lack of it during the debt crisis, is a major
problem as wine production is a capital intensive business. At
any one time, Iatridis has three vintages on his estate in
Amyndeon, the country’s northern-most growing region.
“There is no credit. That is why we work very hard going
around to promote our wines,” he said, adding that before he was
in New York, the New Wines of Greece promotional tour had been
to Denver, Chicago, Montreal and Toronto. Next month, while
other Greeks are voting, he will be trying to sell his wines in
Australia.
Panagiotis Papagiannopoulos, winemaker for the tiny
Tetramythos vineyards in the village of Ano Diakopto not far
from the Gulf of Corinth, took a long view of the political
problems: “We have seen much worse things in the past four or
five decades. This is just a blip.”
Pouring his crisp, white Roditis wine, Papagiannopoulos
predicted that the “politicians will come to their senses and
this will all be resolved. We are not just Greeks, we are
Europeans.”
Even as he spoke, a new poll released in Athens found
Greece’s conservative New Democracy Party, which backs the
country’s international bailout, had re-taken the lead in the
June 17 election race.
