Historic Greek winemaker Tsantalis has filed for bankruptcy at the Thessaloniki Court, with the hearing scheduled for October 11. The company is also seeking a date for the termination of its payments.
President of the workers union Sakis Kaligas stressed that Tsantalis has halted its production since August 2023. For the first time in the company’s history, the grapes were not harvested, preventing them from bottling and marketing the products of the new crop.
The company has been grappling with persistent financial issues, despite concerted efforts to secure its survival and attract investors.
Bankruptcy follows decades of growth for Tsantalis winemaker
The Tsantali family has been growing vines, making wine and distilling tsipoura and ouzo since 1890.
Founder Evaggelos Tsantalis was born in the region of Sidirochori, in the Prefecture of East Thrace, in 1913. He was just nine years old when his family settled down in Serres where, in 1938, he established his first winery.
In 1945, he moved to the city of Thessaloniki and established a distillery for ouzo and in 1970, he founded a further winery in Naoussa.
The first export of Tsantalis wines took place in 1962 and 7 years later the revival of Agioreitikos Vineyard began.
Word of mouth began to spread as merchants from all over came to buy the family’s wine and tsipouro. In 1975 the wine Agioritikos was launched, and in 1983 the wine Makedonikos was a huge commercial success.
The Tsantalis winery-owned vineyards were located in the regions of Agios Pavlos in Halkidiki, Metochi Chromitsa in Mount Athos, Maronia in Thrace, Rapsani in Olympus, and Naoussa.
In 1991, Tsantalis took over the Rapsani winery, which until then belonged to the Ministry of Agriculture. Somehow, on the mythical mountain of Olympus, a new page in the history of wine in Greece began to be written.
“I would plant vines again”
One year after the revival of the historic vineyard in Maroneia, Thrace, in 1995, the cultivation of the Tsantali vineyards began with “organic methods” according to the EU standard.
The Tsantali winery ranked among the largest exporters of Greek wines with a presence in 50 countries worldwide.
“The only work I knew as a child was wine, tsipouro, and ouzo. And when you love a job too much you end up becoming a slave to it. But let it be, if God gave me more years, I would plant vines again”, Evangelos Tsantalis had stated in his last interview, in the magazine Taste, in 1996.
Until 2023, the third generation of the family produced wines, ouzo, and tsipouro of high quality according to traditional principles and the secret recipe of the family.
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