The French are often copied, especially when it comes to wine, and the word on the street is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  The Greeks must love the French very much judging by the amount of pointless and deliberately misleading French language on an average bottle of Greek wine.  But apart from the French language this is no average bottle of Greek wine.

The grapes are Moschofilero, and the wine is from Tselepos.  For all that means to me you might as well be speaking Double Dutch…or erm Greek.

The wine tasted of smooth creamy natural yoghurt with crisp red apples and some pineapple. More like a Chardonnay than a Sauvignon Blanc and quite a refined one at that.

Superb match for roast Poussin and a very gluggable wine.  It’s currently available at the Wine Society for £5.95 and The Wine Concierge at $18.

This is all entirely normal in the run up to any Olympics.  However, unlike other recent hosts, we have contrived to produce the most astonishingly inept logo, and at £400,000, it looks about as cheap as a Northern Rock mortgage.

Rapsani from Tsantali Winery claims to be “The wine of the Gods of Olympos” but I take this with a pinch of salt since, elsewhere on the bottle the label breaks out into a nasty bout of francophilia, claiming the wine to be “Appellation d’Origine de Qualité Supérieure”.

I think this one arrived chez Bathgate by accident, in a random bin end case from Laithwaites.  If you followed the Laithwaites link you will have seen them at pains to compare this wine to a top growth claret.  Never mind the different terroir, never mind the different grapes, it was aged in premium oak barrels and, therefore, deserved comparison with a cru classé. 

Er, sorry, no.

But that’s not to say it’s a bad wine.  I can taste the oak.  I get the herbs and the rich fruit, mostly blackcurrants, reminded me that Ribena ought to launch a toothkind alcopop.  It’s an incredibly intense wine that tastes much stronger than its 13% alcohol rating.  It has a finish that lasts longer than an episode of the Sopranos and a body much larger than Tony’s.  But at the end of the day, it’s a nice wine, not a classic and certainly not challenging the Bordelais just yet.

Every table had a “reserved” sign, the day we visited Dimitris for Sunday lunch.  Fortunately these were not real reserved signs, but merely little Hellenic white lies, so we sat down.

The wine was Santorini 2003 from Heliopoulos Vineyards.  Made from Assyrtiko grapes blended with Athiri and Aidani, it was quite a coloured white wine.  13% is reasonable strength for a wine like this and it smelt strong – hints of ouzo, or just my imagination?  The flavour was of peach and tangy avocado.  A bit short on the finish but overall a very competent wine for my first Greek experience.  At £19.85 though I wondered if it was just a little overpriced.

Pork Souvlaki was as tender as a fresh black eye and the pick of the menu.  The Keftedes were gorgeous pork balls the size of testicles but served with too much tomato sauce.  The falafel were tasty but were over-sized as if chick peas were the only vegetable in season in Manchester. 

Dimitris has a funky Mediterranean feel, especially in the outside/inside bit.  A covered courtyard with olive trees, Greek flag bunting and bustling waiters.

We felt obliged to try the baklava, described as filo pastry, pistachio nuts and honey but came with tons of dried fruit as well.  The honey tasted of a good Sauternes which may start a trend in my blog of trying to compare foods to wine flavours rather than the traditional vice versa.  Then again, I hope, as you do, that it won’t.

The Macchiato, since I have to mention it, in the same way that Giles Coren mentions water, was good but not Italian.  It was pointed out to me that this was a somewhat trite complaint in a Greek resto.

The main thing I noticed at Dimitris was that all the clientele were skinny.  Take a trip down to the curry mile for the opposite end of the obesity spectrum and you will see why Greek cooking is so much healthier than fried curries, rice and naan.  But Greek food, to me, proves that healthy food does not have to be boring or taste free.