Island wines: Gaining attention

By Sarah Jane Evans MW

Published: 13 August, 2026

What do Hokkaido, Essex, Pico, Gorgona and Tinos have in common? That’s right – they are all islands that produce wine. But Essex? Yes, it earns its place here too. Just why, I’ll explain further down. The fact is, island wines have become a thing just as Matt Damon’s epic return to Ithaca in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has got us all thinking about Greek islands. Greece, of course, epitomises island wines (though I would not put Odysseus’s Ithaca quite at the top of the list).

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