Stretching back to the time of classical Athens, restina trends to be a wine of rather indifferent quality and was thus a wine symbol for Greece. In modern times, however, history shows that when Dionysus was revered as god of vines, Greece was regarded as " King of the wines". Far from being a poor relation among wine-producers as it is today, Greece found a ready market for its wine exports in most regions of then known world and viticulture was a thriving art.

The writers of antiquity also confirm the popularity of ancient wines and their great variety. The poet Virgil once wrote that it would be easier to count the grains of sand on a beach that the number of grape varieties in Greece. The preclassical poets Homer and Hesiod both extolled wine's ability to uplift the soul and grant euphoria, while Virgil had dubbed Homer " vinosus Homerus" for the number of times he pays tribute to wine.

Ancient art also reflects the importance that viticulture and wine played in ancient Greek society. Vineyards, grapes, wine drinking and reveling adorn hundreds of ancient artifacts of clay, marble and metal and are immortalized in pictures and sculpture.

Long before France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and other great wine producing countries of Europe acquired their own traditions in viticulture and started to produce the fine wines now enjoyed throughout the world, Greece could boast of a vast array of excellent local vintages. Certain historical sources suggest those Greek colonists in Italy and southern France probably transmitted grape cultivation and winemaking to the Romans and Western Europe.

Archaeologists believe that wines arrived in Greece in Neolithic times (circa 4000 BC) and there is incontrovertible evidence that they were known to the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations. According to archaeology Professor Dimitris Pantemalis evidence for actual wine production can definitely be said to exist for the last 2.800 years.

In many areas, however, where Ottoman influence was strong, grapevines were virtually erased from the agricultural map and even where they continued to be cultivated the conditions did not favor the growth of a wine making tradition- such as freely developed in France, for example, after the 17th century. Only few areas of Greece continued to produce local wines, such as regions surrounding monasteries. Such areas were certain Ionian and Aegean islands outposts of the Venetians and Genoese, and Crete. The famous " malvazia" wine, for example, which for a time was all the rage in Venice was made on Crete.

Not long ago, nearly 40 percent of Greek wine was made in villages, with minimal standards of taste and quality, while today there are 180 000 small-scale cultivators in this category, producing wines with limited quality control. Up until the start of the 80's restina was a firm leader in the domestic market and also extended its absolute dominion to exports. Even today, when its popularity has waned, retsina still accounts for 30 percent of domestic consumption. It continues to be exported en masse to countries with sizeable communities of Greek expatriates, especially Germany, who have become attached to it, associate it with home.

Until the 1960s only retsina and the wines of Samos were exported abroad, while even at home a few Greek companies sold bottled labels.