Vassilis Alexiou

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Chef & Winemaker — Samos

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As a chef de cuisine, you learn wine from the other side of the pass — through the lists,
the pairings, the guests, and the growers who become your suppliers and then your friends.
 

I had the opportunity to be on both sides.

Winemaking was part of my life long before it became my profession — first in Samos,
where my family made wine the way Samian families always had, then at Sigalas Estate
in Santorini, where I understood what it meant to treat the vineyard as a serious place.

When I moved to Paris, I brought both of those worlds with me.

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SANTORINI — THE BEGINNING

My formation began in Santorini, working alongside the team at Sigalas Estate while running my own restaurant.
Under the influence of Carlo Petrini and the early Slow Food movement, I understood something

that would define everything that followed: wine is an agricultural decision before it is a winemaking one.
 

The kitchen and the vineyard were never separate disciplines for me.

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PARIS, 2006 — 2020

In 2006, I opened my restaurant in the Marais, Paris 3rd arrondissement.

The format was deliberate: five starters, five mains, three desserts. Seasonal. No compromises.

The wine list was built entirely around growers working with low-intervention farming and cellar
practices — before that approach had a name, a following, or a market.

All those years , I worked daily alongside the importers, sommeliers, and restaurateurs
who were quietly reshaping how Europe thought about wine. I understood that world from the inside — not as an observer,

but as someone who had to justify every bottle on a list to a table in Paris.

I learned how buyers think. I learned what makes a wine earn a place and keep it.
That knowledge does not come from a winery. It comes from years of service,
selection, and accountability to the people sitting across from you.

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SAMOS, 2016 — THE RETURN

In 2016, I returned to Samos and produced the first experimental vintage —

The Greek Connection — with French natural wine Sommeliers - importers from France.
 

In 2017, the Sous le Végétal project began in earnest.

It was a first exploration: what could the Muscat of Samos becomes when working

with restraint rather than correction, in close dialogue with the schist and quartz

terraces of Mount Karvounis?
 

The labels — Livia, Octave, Hupnos, Auguste, Semelle — became part of the new generation

of Mediterranean low-intervention wines,  found in restaurant lists across France, the USA, Japan, and beyond.

Sous le Végétal was the first chapter of that exploration.
Philia is its continuation in a more structured and long-term form.

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PHILIA — THE SECOND CHAPTER

Philia Winery is not a rebranding. It is a structural evolution.

Where Sous le Végétal was the experiment, Philia is the architecture.
The same commitment to working without unnecessary correction in the cellar, the same respect

for the Samian terroir — but with the precision and the long-term thinking required to build

something that endures vintage after vintage.

New single-parcel labels: Oriens, Omnis, Augustus, Amphora, Vulcanus.
Each label is built around the relationship between site, vessel, and time.

In Greek, Philia describes a bond built on mutual respect and shared values.
That is the only kind of relationship this project is built for.

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Alongside the winery,

I continue to work as a consultant chef through my Private Lab Kitchen in Samos 

for boutique hotels and restaurants that want to think about food and wine as a single discipline.

The chef who understands winemaking. - The winemaker who thinks gastronomically.