Both estiatória and tavernas will usually offer you a choice of bottled wines , and many still have their own house variety: kept in barrels, sold in bulk by the quarter-, half- or full litre, and served either in glass flagons or the brightly coloured tin "monkey-cups" called kantária . Not as many tavernas stock their own wine as once did, but it's worth asking whether they have wine varelísio (barrelled) or hyma (in bulk). You should expect to pay ?3.50-5 per litre, with smaller measures priced proportionately. Non-resinated wine is almost always more than decent. Retsina - pine-resinated wine, a slightly acquired taste - is also available straight from the barrel, though the bottled brands Yeoryiadhi from Thessaloníki, Malamatina from central Greece (often cut with soda water), and Cambas from near Athens, are all excellent and likely to be more consistent in quality.

Among the bottled wines available nationwide , Cambas Attikos, Boutari Lac des Roches, any white from Zítsa and the Rhodian CAIR products (especially the Moulin range) are good, inexpensive whites, while Boutari Naoussa and Kourtakis Apelia are decent, mid-range reds. If you want a better but still moderately priced red, go for the Merlot of either Boutari and Tsantali, or Averof Kato?from Epirus.

If you're travelling around wine-producing islands , however, you may as well go for local bottlings ; the best available guide to the emerging Greek domaines and vintners is Nico Manessis' The Illustrated Greek Wine Book . Almost anything produced on Límnos is decent; the Alexandrine muscat is now used for whites, the local límnio grape for reds and rosés. Thíra, another volcanic island, has a number of premium white products such as Ktima Arghyrou and Boutari Nykhteri, and the Gentilini Robola white of Kefalloni?is justly esteemed. Páros (Moraďtis) and Náxos also both have acceptable local vintages, while Crete is now beginning to have labels superior to the bog-standard Logado, such as Economou (Sitía) and Lyrakis (Iráklio). On Rhodes, Alexandhris products from Émbonas are well thought of, as is the Emery label with its Villar?white, and CAIR's dry white "2400".

Curiously, island red wines (except for Rhodes' CAIR Moulin and Emery Cava) are almost uniformly mediocre; in this respect you're better off choosing reds from the mainland . Carras from Halkidhik?does the excellent Porto Carras, while Ktima Tselepou offers a very palatable Cabernet-Merlot blend. Antonopoulos Yerontoklima (Pátra), Ktima Papaďoannou Nemea (Peloponnese), and Tsantali Rapsani (Thessaly) are all superb, velvety reds - and likely to be found only in the better kultúra tavernas or káves (bottle shops). Antonopoulos, Tselepos (Mantinia domaine) and Papaďoannou also do excellent mainland whites .

The other premium microwineries on the mainland whose products have long been fashionable, in both red and white, include the vastly overrated Hatzimihali (Atalánti, central Greece); Spyropoulos (central Peloponnese), Athanasiadhi (central Greece), Skouras (Argolid) and the two rival Lazaridhi vintners (Dhráma, east Macedonia), especially their superb Merlots. For any of these you can expect to pay ?7-10 per bottle in a shop, double that at a taverna.

Last but not least, CAIR on Rhodes makes its very own " champagne " ("naturally sparkling wine fermented en boteille", says the label), in both brut and demi-sec versions. It's not Moët & Chandon quality by any means, but at less than ?6 per bottle, who's complaining?

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