The Wine Fairy

The half-bottles keep comin’ and they don’t stop comin’! I’m now halfway through tasting all the wines in the 2025 Costco Wine Advent-ure Calendar.

It’s taken longer than I thought. (In truth, there’s better stuff to drink most evenings.) But at this rate, I’ll still be done with the reviews well before Christmas Day. Tonight’s homework is the first wine from Greece that I’ve seen in an advent calendar, the Blue Seirína White Blend.

Scrolling though online wine forums, I often come across the pre-conception that all the wines in holiday gift boxes are sweet. For Costco’s advent calendar, anyway, that’s not the case.

So far, most of the bottles have been dry and the sweet wines are the exception. (There was one flavored white wine this year–and stay tuned for the chocolate wine!) Procuring various styles of wine for the box helps it appeal to a broader range of drinkers, even though it’s not always easy to tell from the packaging which wines are the sugar bombs.

Blue Seirína is definitely on the sweeter side. Not a problem for this nectar-loving Wine Fairy. But will we succumb to the siren song of its fruity allure? Or will our hopes of finding a good wine in the 2025 assortment be dashed upon the rocks? Let’s dive in!

The Label

From the producer: “Blue Seirína is a vibrant and expressive white blend that captures the essence of its unique terroir. The wine opens with an inviting bouquet of fresh citrus, ripe stone fruits, and a subtle floral aroma. On the palate, it is smooth and balanced, with crisp acidity that lifts flavors of ripe yellow fruits and a creamy texture. It finishes softly, with a dense structure that adds depth and balance to the wine.”

The Tasting

Served well-chilled, Blue Seirína is a pale, youthful wine with aromas of apple/pear, lemon and grapefruit. It’s off-dry, leaning medium-dry. Not syrupy by any means, but still too sweet for hasty quaffing and too thick for the moderate intensity of its fruit. The palate is dominated by ripe (almost cooked) pear with medium acidity and a little grapefruit pith. It ends quickly–and badly–with a mushy peach-pear flavor reminiscent of canned fruit cocktail.

If it was summer, I’d try the “Sangria Salvage”–mixing in some sliced fresh peaches, some Cointreau, a splash of grapefruit soda. But sangria weather is over. The leaves are falling on the patio. For Blue Seirína, the tide has already turned.

Costco doesn’t tell us anything about the grapes varieties used in this wine, other than that it’s a white blend from Greece. That’s a bummer, because if they had, I’d probably at least have a new variety to mark off my wine bingo card.

Among wine-producing countries, Greece is atypical because a majority of plantings are of indigenous varieties (89% of vineyard acres). The country’s wine industry is dedicated to supporting their own native grapes. Regulations within the PDO system have slowed down the colonization by Chardonnay, Cabernet, etc., that has homogenized wine across much of the world. Still, all that protective effort seems wasted when Greece’s ancient varieties go anonymously into indistinct bulk blends.

Greek wine can be absolutely wonderful, and I’d hate for this bottle to be anyone’s first and last experience with it. My advice? Leave Blue Seirína in the fridge for that one sweet wine drinker who’s easy to satisfy, and get your local wine shop to hook you up with a nice Assyrtiko instead.

Wine: Blue Seirína White Blend (2023) – Greece

Costco Wine Advent-ure Calendar Number: 12

Grade: C-

Finish the bottle? Nuh-uh.

Further reading:

Ambrosia Magazine: 89% of Greek vineyard dominated by indigenous varieties

I’m tasting all 24 wines in the 2025 Costco Wine Advent-ure calendar! See previous reviews here.

Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.