The Krasochoria wine route: two days through Limassol's wine villages
Terraced vineyards above a stone village on the southern slopes of the Troodos
Two days, eleven villages, six wineries and one 5,000-year-old sweet wine, with tastings at €5-15 and a driving problem that has three honest solutions.
What the Krasochoria are, and how the two days split
Krasochoria means wine villages, and it refers to about twenty settlements on the southern slopes of the Troodos between 600 and 1,100 m, 30-45 minutes north of Limassol. This is where the island's serious wine now comes from, since the big co-operatives near the coast lost their grip in the 1990s and small estates started bottling at altitude. The grapes to learn are Xynisteri, the white that makes lean citrus wines at height and flabby ones lower down, and the reds Mavro, Maratheftiko and Yiannoudi — the last two nearly extinct thirty years ago and now the most interesting things being made here.
Split it geographically. Day one runs the western cluster: Erimi, Vasa Koilaniou, Omodos, Koilani, Lofou. Day two runs the eastern and higher villages plus the Commandaria belt: Pelendri, Kyperounta, then down through Zoopigi, Kalo Chorio, Laneia and Monagri. Total driving is about 150 km over the two days, but the roads are single-track through terraces and the average speed is 35-40 km/h. Do not attempt more than three wineries a day. Four is when the notes stop making sense and the drive home stops being safe.
The driving problem, and the three ways round it
Cyprus enforces a 0.5 g/l blood alcohol limit with 0.2 for new drivers, and the police run breath tests on the Limassol approaches at weekends. Three solutions actually work. First: nominate a driver and have them spit, which every winery here expects and provides for. Second: hire a car with a driver for the day, which runs €160-220 for eight to ten hours from Limassol and is the option I would take for a group of four, working out at €50 a head. Third: join a scheduled small-group tour, typically €75-95 a person including three tastings and lunch.
The fourth option, taxis, does not work — a one-way fare Limassol to Omodos is €55-70 and you will need four of them. Public buses reach Omodos and a couple of the larger villages from Limassol a few times a day, but not the wineries, which mostly sit on tracks outside the villages. Whatever you choose, book the wineries. Almost all of these are five to fifteen-person operations where somebody has to stop working to pour for you; turning up unannounced at a small estate on a Tuesday afternoon in October during harvest will get you a locked gate.
Day 1, 09:30-14:00: Erimi, Vasa and Omodos
Start low with context. The Cyprus Wine Museum at Erimi, 12 km west of Limassol on the old road, costs around €6-7 with a tasting and lays out 5,500 years of production, from Chalcolithic storage jars to the medieval Commandaria trade. Forty-five minutes. Then climb north-west to Vasa Koilaniou, a stone village at 700 m, where one of the island's best-regarded small estates works with Xynisteri and Maratheftiko and offers seated tastings by appointment. Tasting fees across the region run €5-15 for four to six wines, usually deducted from any purchase, which changes the arithmetic if you were going to buy anyway.
Reach Omodos by 12:30. It is the most visited village in the range and it shows — coach parking, souvenir shops, a cobbled square — but the core is genuinely fine: the monastery of Timios Stavros with its carved wooden ceiling, and the linos, a preserved medieval wine press in a stone house off the square that is free to enter and explains more about how this was done than any museum panel. Lunch here at 13:00, on the square: village sausage, hiromeri ham, halloumi, koupepia and pork afelia cooked in red wine and coriander seed, at €18-25 a head.
Day 1, 15:00-19:00: Koilani, Lofou and where to stop
Koilani, 10 minutes east of Omodos at 900 m, is quieter and prettier and has a tiny ecclesiastical museum plus a village viticulture museum in an old house — both cost a euro or two and open irregularly. Just outside it, one of the estates that pioneered serious single-vineyard bottling here pours by appointment, and this is the stop where the difference between a €9 supermarket Xynisteri and a €22 barrel-aged one becomes obvious in the glass. Give it an hour and a half, and expect to be talked at by whoever is on the crush pad; that is the point of coming.
End the day at Lofou, a restored stone village on a saddle at 800 m with almost no cars, unbroken tile roofs and about ninety residents. Walk the lanes for 40 minutes before dinner. Lofou is the best place on this route to eat: two or three tavernas in vaulted houses do slow-cooked ofto kleftiko, tavas and mezes at €22-30 a head, and they open in the evening for people who have booked. That is your day-one stop. Beyond Lofou it is dark, unlit road down to Limassol at 40 km/h.
Where to sleep on night one
Sleep in the villages, not on the coast. Lofou, Omodos, Koilani and Vasa all have restored stone houses let as guesthouses — thick walls, beamed ceilings, courtyards with a vine and a mulberry tree — at €80-140 a night for two with breakfast, less midweek in November and February, and more like €150-180 in the fortnight either side of Orthodox Easter. Lofou has the smallest inventory and books earliest; Omodos has the most rooms and the most coach noise until about 17:00, after which it empties completely and becomes lovely.
The alternative that I would not choose: staying in Limassol and driving up twice. It is 40-50 minutes each way on winding roads, which means the second glass at the last winery is impossible and dinner in the mountains is off the table. If you must, base at the western end of the city near the Erimi turn to save fifteen minutes. Note also that village guesthouses this high have no air conditioning in some rooms and do not need it — August nights at 800 m drop to 20-22C while Limassol stays at 27C.
Day 2: the high villages and the Commandaria belt
Head east and up. Pelendri at 900 m has a UNESCO-listed painted church, Timiou Stavrou, with a fourteenth-century fresco cycle and a Tree of Jesse, and an estate on the edge of the village that was among the first to make cool-climate reds here. Kyperounta, ten minutes further at 1,100 m, has vineyards planted at heights that make no sense anywhere else in the Mediterranean and a winery producing taut whites and structured Maratheftiko. Two tastings this morning, spaced from 10:00 and 12:30, is exactly right; add a third and you will not remember the second.
In the afternoon, drop south into the fourteen villages that hold the Commandaria appellation — Zoopigi, Kalo Chorio, Agios Konstantinos, Louvaras, Gerasa, Silikou, Monagri, Laneia and the rest. Commandaria is a sweet wine from sun-dried Xynisteri and Mavro, named after the crusader Grande Commanderie at Kolossi, and plausibly the oldest named wine still in production anywhere. Small producers in Zoopigi and Kalo Chorio pour it by appointment; a 50 cl bottle costs €12-25, aged bottlings more. Finish at Laneia, an artists' village of restored houses 20 minutes from the motorway.
What to buy, when to come, and where night two ends
Buy at the wineries, not at the airport. Realistic prices at the cellar door: a village Xynisteri €8-12, a serious single-vineyard white €18-25, Maratheftiko €20-35, Yiannoudi from the handful of producers who make it €25-40, and Commandaria €12-25 for 50 cl. Two bottles of Maratheftiko and one Commandaria is the sensible souvenir haul. Skip the sweet dessert wines sold in gift shops on the Omodos square, which are not the appellation product, and skip the enormous zivania bottles unless you know you like a 45 per cent grape spirit.
Timing: harvest runs from mid-August at low altitude to late September at 1,100 m and is the most interesting time to visit, though wineries are stretched and some suspend tastings for a fortnight. April and May give you wildflowers on the terraces and 22-25C. The Limassol wine festival takes over the municipal gardens for ten days at the start of September if you would rather taste eighty wines in one field. For night two, either stay a second night in the same village and drive down on day three, or end at Laneia and be back in Limassol in 25 minutes.
Before you book
The questions people ask about Limassol, answered with this month’s numbers.
Yes, almost all of them. These are small family estates where the winemaker does the pouring, and several open only by appointment or close for a fortnight during harvest. Email or phone two or three days ahead, confirm the day before, and tell them your group size — anything over six usually changes the arrangement and the fee.
Typically €5-15 for four to six wines, sometimes with bread, olives and halloumi. Most producers deduct the fee if you buy a bottle or two, though the bigger operations with a proper tasting room increasingly do not. Ask when you book, and carry cash — card terminals are not universal in the smaller cellars.
Not usefully. Buses from Limassol reach Omodos and a few larger villages a handful of times a day, but the wineries sit on tracks outside the villages and there is no service between the villages themselves. Hire a car with a driver at €160-220 a day, or take a scheduled small-group tour at €75-95 a head.
Try it before committing. The mass-market versions are cloying, but a small-producer bottling aged in old oak is nutty and dried-fig-like with real acidity, closer to an aged tawny than a dessert syrup. It costs €12-25 for 50 cl at the cellar door and keeps for weeks once opened.
