Douloufakis Winery — Attraction in Municipality of Heraklion

Hubby and I visited with our two little girls in mid August during Coronavirus. Our host and her daughter were amazing, delighted to talk to us about their wines, the history of the winery (and Crete) and we enjoyed a personal tour which was very interesting and our girls found really good too!

We went for the 5 glass tasting and it was tailored to what wines we prefer (we’re red drinkers) we actually got 6 wine samples in the end which was great and sizeable samples too. We also had the local food pairing which was delicious. The homemade tomato chutney to go with the Cretan meats and cheeses was delicious.

The Team were fantastic at entertaining our girls (they have a great selection of books, puzzles and crafts) so we all had a super time! We bought some bottles to bring home (great prices as you’d expect at source).

A couple of days later, hubby and I were on a date night in Rethymnon (Lemon Tree) and were delighted to find Douloufakis on the wine list, so we ordered the sparkling wine which was absolutely delicious!

We’re been to some big hitters in the usual regions (Napa/Sanoma, Hunter, Champagne, Verde, various in Spain etc) but this lovely winery on this beautiful island has been one of the...

We are just coming back from the tasting at the Douloufakis winery. And the experience was a bit mixed. We were happy with the quality of the wines but not so happy with the hospitality part. Unfortunately the lady in the tasting room who also gave us the tour seemed to be new and didn't know much about wine. She couldn't answer most of our questions e.g. the age of the grapevines. For 15 Euro per person you get to try 6 different wines, but you can't really choose and they mainly give you their lower range. It took some persistent asking to get to try their more interesting higher range. Which we ended up buying 7 bottles of. Still we had to pay for the tasting (since we came by car we only sipped the wine and didn't drink much.. in our opinion you should at least get to pick when you pay over 2 Euro per glass in a tasting room... the accompanying food was some pieces of really dry bread). Maybe we also would've bought some of their international varieties like Syrah, Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon but weren't offered to try them. Sorry, wine is really good quality and the autochtone varieties are exciting to taste but the hospitality part and adopting to costumers level of experience needs to...

Book their private wine tasting in the vineyard rather than the tasting at the estate! It was a fantastic experience! They drove us on the back of a pickup into the vineyards, with one photo stop on the way there and another stop on the way back. The views are fantastic, making the tasting even better.

Edit 2025: We have done the same tasting again today. The wines (to our taste) are even better than before. They take you to a different spot these days, closer to the vineyard, but still with a very pretty view.

This part easily gets 5 stars. The only bit dampening the mood a tiny bit at the end was the lack of organization at the estate. We were hoping to try an additional three wines and explained that we were willing to pay for that. After quite a bit of confusion and some 3 different people getting involved we ended up buying two of the wines we wanted to try and had them give us chilled ones and let them open them for us. When it came to buying more than 2 or 3 bottles they referred us to distributors in our area at home rather than selling on the spot and shipping.

Either way it was a great experience that we gladly suggest to anyone looking for a tasting...