In an end-of-year school report when I was about 13, a teacher warned that I should not rest on my laurels. At the time I was outraged in typically adolescent style and failed to consider the Hellenic origins of this phrase. Now, during a week in Greece, first at the Oenorama wine fair in Athens, organised by journalist Constantine Stergides, and then in various regions of the Peloponnese, from Monemvasia in the south to Patras in the north, the phrase and that incident came back to me, especially when I tasted Lyrarakis' intensely bay/laurel-scented wine made from the Cretan variety...