Some years ago at the Psaro Taverna, a small park Avenue Greek restaurant in Montreal, we tasted a strange wine, a Retsina Cambas. The waiter had recommended it with fried calamari and red snapper. At first sip we were taken aback...but the taste sort of grew on us and it definitely enhanced the taste of the calamari and the snapper.
We later bought a few bottles at the Société des Alcools du Québec and had friends tasting it with venison and spiced meat roasts of various kinds. The results were persistant: hesitation followed by "give me more".
Several years ago the Retsina disappeared from the SAQ shelves. Last week, to my astonishment, I saw a golden liquor on top of a low stand at our nearby SAQ outlet, about 6 bottles of Malamatina Retsina, 500 ml, bottles for 4, 95$C. I immediately got one and we drank it with a fish dish. Although not as good as we recalled the Cambas to be, it was still a great treat.
Some years ago, in a short notice in the national Geographic Magazine I read that divers had found a sunken Phoenician barge off the coast of Turkey. It contained amphoras carbon dated to circa 2000 B.C. containing what turned out to be retsina...thanks to the cold waters of the deep it was still drinkable.
