Retsina is often sold as nostalgia in a glass. Eleni Kechri flips that story.
The chemical engineer and oenologist, working with Yiorgos Darlas, treats pine resin as terroir — the taste of a place — not a souvenir. Their Kallos line, rooted in 1979 and relaunched in 2024, maps sea pine versus mountain pine the way other estates map a single vineyard. They call it a pineyard. A patented sustainable resin method, recognised by the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation, aims to keep more limonene and terpenes than conventional acid taps, which often run oilier. Cold April collections differ from hotter August–September forests. Mature Assyrtiko at low yields then carries what they frame as “meta-retsina” — Greek identity sharpened by forest chemistry.
Mini-concept: resin as terroir. Most people meet retsina as a holiday joke or a memory drink. Kechri asks you to taste which forest the resin came from, and when it was collected. That is an intentional choice against a random flavoured can that only pretends at place.
Keep the root year. 1979 started the line. 2024 relaunched it. The forest, not the postcard, is the point.