In the winter of 2024, Rizes found a sealed stone room beneath its building in Fira, on the lip of the caldera, the cliff above the flooded volcanic crater at the heart of Santorini. The island had long known the building as the Sphinx. The room came to light while the premises were being worked on for a restaurant that had not yet opened. Inside were dozens of aged bottles from the island, from the Greek mainland and from vineyards abroad, all of them intact. In the summer of 2025 the room opened as a cellar in its own right, with Greek and international labels and a table laid for four.
What was found
The find was by chance, and that is much of its interest. The building stands opposite the Metropolitan Cathedral of Fira, on the edge of the caldera, and the work under way was a renovation, with no digging planned. The cellar came to light during it. It had been untouched for decades, and its bottles were still where someone had laid them down. They are a record of what the island drank and kept, and of what it thought worth putting away.
Rizes did not clear the room out. It restored it and built the collection outward from what was already there, so the cellar carries on from the one it found. The restaurant itself opened in Fira in June 2025 under Alexandros Makropoulos, its executive chef and co-owner, in partnership with the Aestian Group. Maria Sylla is head chef.
The island’s own wines
At the centre of the cellar now are Vinsanto, a sweet wine made from sun-dried grapes, and Nykteri, a white wine whose name comes from the Greek word for night. These are the two wines that show most plainly what Santorini is. The bottles come from Argyros, Sigalas, Hatzidakis and Karamolegos, four wineries that work the same volcanic ground to four different ends. Seen together, they are the nearest thing the island has to a statement of what it stands for.
A visitor is least likely to have met this part of the collection elsewhere. Santorini’s wines travel, but they travel young. A cellar that has kept them for years, on the island that made them, gives something a wine list cannot, however good the list.
Beyond the caldera
The collection goes further. Gerovasileiou, Alpha Estate and Hatzimichalis stand for the Greek mainland, and between them they cover most of what has changed in Greek wine over the past few decades. Beyond Greece, the cellar holds aged Bordeaux, Italian and Spanish labels and more French bottles, with vintage Dom Pérignon and Armand de Brignac.
That range is unusual for an island cellar, and it is deliberate. A room that begins with Nykteri and ends with a vintage champagne invites a comparison that neither bottle makes on its own.
A table for four
The cellar is a working room, and it seats four. At the Private Cellar Dinner, a table of four eats in the stone room by candlelight, with a tasting menu paired with wines from the collection. There is also a heritage tasting of Greek wine and olive oil, which covers the same ground more slowly.
The number is deliberate. Four seats rule out the larger group that becomes an occasion in itself. They leave what the room suits: a small party, a long evening and a sommelier with time to open the bottles in an order that means something. Santorini has many tables with a view of the caldera, and very few rooms where the view plays no part. This is one of them, below ground and lit by candles.
Who is this for
Rizes suits wine lovers, couples and small groups who want Greek cooking close to the caldera, whether for lunch, dinner or a late drink. It is open from 12pm to 1am. Tables are set on a covered terrace with the blue water of the caldera below. Inside, the dining room has walls of sculpted terracotta plaster, an arched niche and a long backlit stone table. The interior architect Dimitrios Oikonomou mixed traditional Cycladic elements with modern lines. Groups of more than 12 book with the restaurant directly.
