(Bloomberg) - At the beach, I’m doing my bit to boost the Greek economy by sipping a refreshing Domaine Sigalas Assyrtiko, a salty, smoky white wine from the romantic, volcanic island of Santorini. Just so you know, this is not just altruism—Greek wines have been on an upward quality trajectory for years, and they’re better than ever despite the debt-ridden country’s financial woes. 

Luckily, now that the banks have reopened, wineries may be able to pay for the bottles, corks, and equipment they need for the 2015 harvest, which starts next month. Because of capital controls imposed in June, though, that will be complicated. Suppliers are demanding cash upfront.

So boost sales and drink up.

Not a Greek wine fan? You should be.

I first fell in love with Greek wines a decade ago when I served as a judge at a wine competition in Thessaloniki and spent a week tasting, touring, and trying to perfect my pronunciation of local grapes like agiorgitiko. (A tongue-twisting name has long been a clue that the wine will be a bargain.)

You could say the European Union helped kick-start the wine revolution in Greece

Three hundred or so native varieties grow in Greece, but despite the country’s several thousand years of winemaking history, many had nearly died out by the end of the 19th century. Vineyard taxation and Muslim prohibition of alcohol during the four-century-long Ottoman occupation almost did them in.

Then, in the early 1980s, along came committed grape rescuers like pioneer Evangelos Gerovassiliou, who started his eponymous winery in 1981 on a peninsula southeast of Thessaloniki. He revived the white grape malagousia after a professor found the last remaining vine in a remote mountain village (or so goes the tale).

A quick Greek grape lesson: The four major varieties besides malagousia are two other whites—light, fragrant moschofilero and salty, minerally assyrtiko—and two reds: fruity, elegant agiorgitiko and spicy, earthy xinomavro.

One of Greece’s best wineries, Alpha Estate, is a knockout producer of xinomavro. When I first visited this bright pink winery in the windy northwest region of Amyndeon, about 25 miles from the Albanian border, winemaker Angelos Iatridis described how he’d tracked down dozens of owners in order to buy 85 small plots of land. Piece by piece, he assembled one single large block of vineyards for the winery. It’s a model of the latest developments in what’s called “precision” viticulture. A sensor system in the vineyard continuously monitors the moisture content in each patch of soil.

Alpha Estate was created from scratch in the late 1990s, and received 40 percent of its total investment in machinery and construction from the European Union, and older wineries have relied on EU subsidies to modernize. You could say the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) helped kick-start the wine revolution in Greece after the country joined in 1981. CAP implements subsidies for some kinds of vine research, vineyard replanting, construction projects, and even equipment purchases like tractors.