From the atlas
A A Evangelou Winery
At A Glance
Producer: A A Evangelou Winery Country: Cyprus Region: Commandaria Appellation: Commandaria PDO Grapes: Xynisteri, Mavro Style: Sweet amber wine from sun-dried grapes Founded: 2018
The Producer
Andreas Evangelou founded the winery in 2018 on the southern slopes of the Troodos Mountains, inside the Commandaria PDO zone. He trained at the Faculty of Agriculture at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, one of the oldest agriculture schools in the eastern Mediterranean, and returned to Cyprus with a working knowledge of soil science and crop physiology. Most producers in the appellation have relied on traditional field observation passed between generations. Evangelou brought sensors and maps.
The estate is small. It grows both Commandaria varieties, Xynisteri and Mavro, and farms them organically since 2021. The winery sells domestically and through Systembolaget in Sweden.
Place
Commandaria is among the oldest named appellations in the world. It covers fourteen villages on the lower southern slopes of the Troodos Mountains, broadly between 500 and 1,500 metres altitude, where the summers are long, the air is dry, and the soils shift from red clay to limestone as elevation rises. The PDO designation is for a single style: sweet wine made from Xynisteri and Mavro grapes harvested ripe and then left in the sun to dry, concentrating their sugars before pressing and fermentation.
The appellation name appears on labels and in wine history books long before most European classifications existed. The Crusaders traded it; the Venetians taxed it. Today it sits in a category of its own, neither a dessert wine added with sugar nor a fortified wine strengthened with spirit, but a naturally concentrated sweet wine from two indigenous grapes grown on one specific ridge of one specific island.
Soil And Site
Evangelou uses NDVI drone mapping to assess vine canopy and build soil maps across his parcels. NDVI, the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, measures reflected infrared light from foliage to identify where vines are under stress, where soils are thinner, and where water retention differs across a single vineyard. The maps allow Evangelou to divide his parcels into management zones rather than treating the whole vineyard as a uniform block, a standard large-estate method now applied at small-estate scale inside an appellation better known for ancient practice than modern agronomy.
The slopes face south, which gives the sun exposure necessary for the post-harvest drying that defines Commandaria. Altitude moderates the summer heat, preserving the natural acidity that keeps the wines from tipping into flat sweetness.
Story
Commandaria has two distinct producer worlds. The large commercial houses, several of them operating for over a century, make Commandaria in industrial volumes with purchased fruit, often aged in solera-style systems for consistent house styles. The small estate producers, a younger and much smaller group, grow their own grapes, work at human scale, and are trying to argue that Commandaria is a wine of place as much as a wine of tradition.
Evangelou belongs to the second group. He graduated from Thessaloniki, where the agriculture faculty trains students in soil science, viticulture, and crop management at a level that goes well beyond what most small wineries would apply. He came back to Cyprus and converted the family vineyards to organic farming in 2021, a decision that required removing synthetic inputs at a time when yields were already constrained by altitude and variety. Before the organic conversion, and alongside it, he had already begun mapping the vineyards with drones. By the time the organic process was underway, he had a clearer picture of his soils than most producers in the zone had ever attempted to build.
Vineyards And Cellar
The vineyards are farmed organically. No synthetic herbicides, fungicides, or fertilisers have been used since 2021. On the Troodos slopes, where rainfall is seasonal and the growing season is reliably dry and warm, organic viticulture is demanding in the early transition years but achieves lower intervention fruit once the soil biology stabilises.
The drone-based NDVI system divides the vineyard into management zones. Where the index shows lower canopy vigour, Evangelou adjusts irrigation or nutrition. Where it shows irregular stress, the maps help locate the cause before it becomes a yield loss. Experimental zones within the vineyard serve as testing areas where new methods are trialled before being applied across the full estate.
Post-harvest, Commandaria PDO requires the grapes to be sun-dried after picking, spreading them on mats or mesh trays in the open air to reduce water weight and raise sugar concentration before pressing. The must from Xynisteri and Mavro ferments naturally to a point where residual sugar remains, and the wine then ages, typically in oak, to build the oxidative depth the style is known for.
Wines
Evangelou makes Commandaria PDO wine from estate-grown Xynisteri and Mavro. Xynisteri is a white grape with moderate natural acidity and stone fruit character; Mavro is the local red grape, giving body, colour depth, and dried fruit weight when the berries are concentrated through sun-drying. The two varieties are blended after drying and fermentation in proportions that vary by vintage conditions.
The wine is amber-brown, sweet, and built for ageing. The sugar concentration reached through sun-drying is higher than table wine by a large margin, and the fermentation is arrested or allowed to run slowly to a natural stop before the wine reaches dryness. The resulting wine carries dried fruit, honey, and oxidative character from oak contact, with a body thick enough to coat the glass but enough residual acidity from the altitude to keep the finish from collapsing.
Beyond the core Commandaria, no additional cuvées or range tiers have been confirmed in available sources.
In The Glass
Commandaria from this estate comes from grapes grown at altitude, farmed without synthetic inputs, and harvested at full ripeness before drying. The sun-drying process removes water over days or weeks, and by the time the must ferments it carries concentrated dried apricot, fig, and dark honey alongside the grape's original character. In the mouth, the sweetness is full but not flat: the mountain acidity from Xynisteri keeps the mid-palate from closing down, and the finish runs longer than most sweet wines of comparable weight. Mavro brings dried cherry and a faint tannic warmth that sits underneath the fruit rather than interrupting it. Oak ageing adds walnut and dried peel to the aromatics. The wine is amber in the glass, deepening at the rim, and opens further with a few minutes of air.
A Bottle To Understand It
The Commandaria PDO is the only bottle to start with. It is amber, sweet, and built from sun-dried Xynisteri and Mavro grown on organically farmed mountain parcels mapped by drone for soil variation. The dried fruit character is forward, thick with fig and apricot, and the oak ageing adds a walnut note that grounds the wine. The acidity from the altitude holds everything upright through the long finish. A small pour is enough; Commandaria is concentrated and built to last in the glass and in the cellar. For anyone who has not tasted Commandaria before, this bottle makes the category legible: where the sweetness comes from, what the two native grapes contribute, and why a wine from this specific ridge of the Troodos has carried the same name for eight centuries.
Anecdote
When Evangelou returned to Cyprus after finishing his degree in Thessaloniki, the Commandaria zone had no drone operators among its producers. He bought a commercial agricultural drone, mounted it with a multispectral camera, and flew his own parcels. The NDVI data came back as colour-coded maps showing vine canopy variation across plots he had walked by hand for years. What the maps showed was that the fields he had assumed were uniform were not: some zones were stressed in patterns that matched sub-surface soil changes invisible at ground level. He divided those parcels into management zones, adjusted his inputs accordingly, and filed the maps. By the time he converted the vineyards to organic in 2021, the zoning work was already done. The drone maps, built before organic certification was a target, ended up as the foundation of the organic farming plan.
Final Word
A A Evangelou Winery is a young estate making a very old wine. The category it works in, Commandaria PDO, exists because two native grapes, a specific method of sun-drying, and one ridge of mountains have been treated as inseparable for centuries. Evangelou's contribution is to apply drone-based NDVI soil mapping, a method the largest wine estates in France and Germany have used for two decades, to a boutique operation in an appellation most buyers have never encountered. The bottle in the glass is amber, sweet, and long on the finish. The story behind it is a younger one than the label suggests.
Sources
- https://commandaria-winery.cy/winery-2/
- https://commandaria-winery.cy/viticulture/