George Makris

My name is Giorgos (George) Makris and I am Surveyor Engineer.

I graduated from the National Technical University of Athens in 1976 and from 1979 until today I work in the School of Rural and Surveying Engineering of the same University.

I am specialized in surveying & documentation of the monuments. This is the field of my researches, the field I teach our students and... the one that makes me travel throughout Greece.

From a point onwards, along with archaeological sites and monuments, wine was also a reason to make me travel.

Around the end of 2001 "I really got the bug for it” and since then.....

I visit sites, tour the wineries, list the producers, vineyards, varietals, wine and liquor stores, restaurants, lodging, shops of local products, interesting places and activities. Of course, to the extent possible, I also study the wine history of each place. Needless to say that studying museums, monuments and archaeological sites is for granted.

So I systematically practice wine tourism but (as many hated money but no one hated glory...... right? or the other way round?) I like to be called a Wine Surveyor.

Initially, I was seeking for an opportunity to do all this activity and everything was done on my own funds. From early 2007 until the end of 2010 I had the support of Β‘AmpelotopiΒ’ newspaper and my wine research started to be done on a stable basis.

During this period, this paper hosted the impressions from my travels under the column "Wine Explorations". From April 2008 until mid-2010 I was in charge of the column Β‘NEW RELEASESΒ’, where I was introducing new wines. From times to times, apart from these columns, I was writing about several other wine topics.

In 2008 I started an informal collaboration with Geotropio of ELEFTHEROTYPIA, presenting various wine topics and writing the corresponding part in one of the magazineΒ’s special editions. From February 2009 this cooperation became permanent and so, every Saturday until June 2010 -when the newspaper suspended the publication of the magazine-, a recipe and a wine were put along texts about several areas of Greece. Please note that although I write and publish, I donΒ’t consider myself a journalist.

And one last thing that will help you understand how I think and act:

"Out of the many things that I've read about smoking and drinking, I decided to become selective in reading." It's probably stolen and slightly paraphrased. In the original, the famous writer who said this saying quitted reading. But it is possible someone quits reading?

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