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This is where East nearly meets West, Monemvasia, the Gibraltar of the East. I came here in my early 20s with my brother John. This rock marked the end of our travels. If I remember rightly, very few people lived here then. There was a bit of building work going on, but I recall some of the locals being rather skeptical about actually living here. They said it's full of ruins. Leave it to the rats and spiders. There's only one way into this place, an archway, too narrow for a car, nice for a donkey. Monemvasia actually means one way in, and this tunnel has a kink in it. I think it's to stop
invading armies in their tracks and give them a bit of surprise when they turn the corner. And then, you actually turn the corner and I'm in Clavelli. No, I'm only joking. 40 years on, I hardly recognize the place. It was a ghost town. It's been restored, I think, with great love for the old Byzantine ways and traditions. I just wouldn't fancy lugging my suitcase to the very top. I'm quite enjoying the wandering around Monemvasia because when I came here before, it was virtually derelict and apparently just filled with snakes and rats. So, this is quite a recent bit of building, but obviously this here is probably
2,000 years old, Greek or Roman. And you sort of think, how could they have done that, right? They would have found this bit of marble somewhere and just stuck it up there as a lintel. But the chickens are upside down. Couldn't they just have seen the chickens would be upside down forevermore? No, builders. This is where the famous Malmsey wine, much loved in England in the 15th century, came from, and it was exported in great big barrels called butts. And that, immortalized, of course, in Shakespeare's Richard the III, where the Duke of Clarence is drowned in a butt of Malmsey. And possibly the best bit of dramatic irony ever, he asks what he thinks is the jailer in the Tower of London for a
cup of wine, but in fact, it's one of the assassins. And the assassin says, "Thou shalt have wine enough, my lord. Anon." Barrels of Malmsey wine were shipped from here by Venetian and Genoese traders to eventually end up in England. But when Constantinople fell to the Turks 500 years ago, everything changed. Port and Madeira wine eventually took over in popularity from Malmsey. I remember my favorite wine merchant in the world, Bill Baker, who sadly no longer with us, telling me the story of Malmsey.
He said it was the tipple of all the well-to-do people in England. It had a taste of honey and dried fruits, and it was exotic, delicious, and expensive. Maybe these vineyards near Monemvasia supplied the grapes for the original Malmsey, but their owner, Yiorgos Simbides and his wife, Ellie, have made it a lifetime dream to bring it back to the place where it began, which I think is quite amazing after 500 years. Hello. Ellie? Very Ellie. Very nice to meet you here. Welcome. And Yiorgos. Yiorgos doesn't speak any English, but wine has a way of making people understand each other anyway. It really does. I wonder why.
I often find myself in a situation like this and we get on like a house on fire. Oh, it's nice and cool. Good lord, it's very nice, actually. It's sort of working cellar. I mean, so many towns in France they look like they're there for visitors, but I love this. That's really nice. I wish my friend Bill could have been here to try this. It's like tasting history because no other wine was more famous during the Middle Ages than Malmsey.
It was called Malvasia by the Venetians, but it will always be Malmsey to me. Oh. That's so good. It's full of warm sunshine. It's It's unctuous. It's lovely and sweet. It's got lots of fruit in it. I just want to carry on drinking it. But tell me, why he felt so passionate about reintroducing Malmsey or Malvasia again? He recreate again this wine because it was lost for many, many years. And he going to make this all as present to his country and the people of here. And this wine is for all the world from our little place. The fact he's brought it back, I think it's fabulous. I first came here in the '70s and I'd heard about Malmsey in Monemvasia and I thought, "Oh, it'd be
so good to get some." But of course, there wasn't It wasn't. And I just when I heard that you were producing it again, I thought, "Great."
