Kairos Wines

Story

Kairos.

From the ancient Greek — the right moment, the opportune time. The moment a thing is ready to happen, and not before.

Tyson and Emma of Kairos Wines beneath an apricot tree at their vineyard in the Kedros mountains, Crete

The parcel had been planted in 2014, three quarters of an acre of Shiraz, Cabernet, and Merlot on the slope of Mount Soros. By the time I came to work it the vines were eleven years old, organic since the first season, and waiting.

2025 was the first year the wine got made. It was not, in any way, a clean year. The press broke on the first morning of harvest and we finished the day pressing rosé through a pillowcase. Powdery mildew took most of the Merlot in early August; what survived went into the Cabernet blend, five and a half bottles from the whole row. Two of the ferments stalled at six degrees Brix and had to be coaxed home with a gentle rouse and a corner of the room three degrees warmer than the others.

Emma of Kairos Wines standing in the vineyard with a shovel, dressed in overalls, in front of the Kedros mountain slope

On the parcel

The work is shared.

Kairos is a family venture. The vineyard is Tyson's day-to-day work, the brand is Emma's voice, and everything — from pruning to bottling to the way we tell you what we are doing — is a conversation between the two of us.

None of which was a disaster. All of which was the wine making itself known. The Shiraz came through clean, bright, peppery; the rosé took on the colour of dust at noon and dried out properly by week three. The Cabernet, against the odds, was the wine that most surprised me — five bottles plus a half, dark and gentle, a record of the year more honest than any clean vintage could have made.

Emma holding bunches of ripe purple grapes just picked at harvest, at the Kairos Wines vineyard in the Kedros mountains

Harvest

The moment the year gives what it has.

Kairos is the moment when conditions align. In wine that moment comes once a year, at picking. Everything before is preparation; everything after is response.

I called it Kairos because the word does the work I want the wine to do. It is not chronological time, the time that the clock measures; it is the moment that arrives when conditions align and the right thing is possible. The grapes are ready when they are ready. The wine is bottled when it stops needing me. There is a moment, and you catch it, or you don't.

The Kairos Wines family in the vineyard with the Kedros mountain range beyond

Sub-thousand bottles a year is the scale this place can sustain without becoming something else. That is the scale we will stay at.

— Tyson

A wooden swing hanging from a tree at the Kairos Wines vineyard property, surrounded by ferns and wildflowers