If you’re considering a Manousakis Winery tour from Chania, we can make this one easy: go.

We visited Manousakis Winery during our time in Crete and it turned out to be one of our favourite experiences away from Chania’s coastline. From learning how Cretan wine is produced to exploring the winery, visiting the cellar and eventually sitting down for food and wine tasting, there was much more to the experience than simply trying a few glasses of wine.

What really stood out was how informative the tour was. Our Greek-American guide was excellent, explaining not only the winemaking process but also the history of wine in Crete and where Cretan wine sits in the wider global wine market.

You don’t need to be a wine expert to enjoy it either. Everything was explained in an approachable way, and even if this is your first proper winery tour, you’ll come away knowing considerably more about what goes into the bottle.

In this Manousakis Winery review, we’ll take you through our experience from Chania, what we learnt inside the winery and cellar, the food and wine tasting, and whether we think it’s worth adding to your Crete itinerary.

Planning more than just a winery visit? We’ve put together a complete Chania Travel Guide covering the best things to do, beaches, restaurants, tours and places to stay across Chania and western Crete.

Manousakis Winery Tour at a Glance

Before getting into our full experience, here’s a quick overview of the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania and what you can expect.

One important thing to mention is that we booked a special version of the tour that included food, so the meal you’ll see later in our review shouldn’t be assumed to be included with every Manousakis Winery tour. Always check exactly what’s included with the specific tour option you’re booking.

The biggest thing to know is that this isn’t simply a wine tasting. A large part of the experience is learning how Manousakis produces its wine, with the tasting coming after you’ve explored the winery and learnt about the process.

For us, that made the wines we eventually tasted considerably more interesting – you’re drinking something you’ve just spent time learning about.

👉 Check the latest price, availability and inclusions for the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania.

What Is Manousakis Winery?

Manousakis Winery is a family-owned boutique winery located in Vatolakkos, around 20 km southwest of Chania, in the foothills of Crete’s White Mountains.

The story behind the winery is an interesting one. Founder Ted Manousakis was born in Vatolakkos in 1943 before moving to the United States as a child. After building his life in America, he wanted to reconnect with his Cretan roots and eventually turned to winemaking as a way of giving something back to the island. The first Manousakis vineyards were planted in 1993.

That connection with home is also behind the name you’ll see on many of the winery’s bottles: Nostos. The Greek word refers to the idea of returning or yearning to come home – a fitting name given the story behind the winery.

Today, Manousakis focuses on handcrafted wines and organic and regenerative farming. Its vineyards sit at elevations of roughly 350 to 650 metres, with varieties including Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Roussanne growing in the hills around Vatolakkos. The winery also produces wines using Cretan varieties such as Vidiano.

Visitors can tour the winery and then head to its tasting terrace, surrounded by olive trees and orange groves, where Manousakis wines can be paired with Cretan food from the winery’s taverna.

It’s a beautiful setting, but what made Manousakis particularly interesting for us was getting to see what happens behind the scenes – something we’ll get into in our tour experience below.

Our Manousakis Winery Tour Experience

We booked the Manousakis Winery Tour while staying in Chania and, from the journey to the winery through to the final wine tasting, the experience felt personal, relaxed and genuinely informative.

Rather than jumping straight to the wine, we’ll take you through the tour in the same order we experienced it.

Hotel Pickup & Journey to Manousakis Winery

Our tour started with pickup directly from Domes Noruz Chania, where we were staying during our trip to Crete.

We were collected in a comfortable nine-seater vehicle, which immediately made the experience feel much more personal than a typical large coach excursion.

From our hotel, the journey to Manousakis Winery took around 40 minutes and was fairly smooth. However, this wasn’t simply a transfer where everyone sat quietly waiting to arrive – the tour effectively started from the moment we got into the vehicle.

Our Greek-American guide spoke with us throughout the journey, giving us some background on wine in Crete, how Cretan wine fits into the global wine market and the history of Crete itself.

We found this genuinely interesting. It gave us some context around the wines we were about to discover while also teaching us more about the island we’d been exploring throughout our trip.

More importantly, our guide delivered everything in a really engaging way. By the time we reached Manousakis, the 40-minute journey had gone quickly and we were already excited to get inside and start the winery tour.

Arriving at Manousakis Winery

When we arrived at Manousakis Winery, we didn’t immediately head inside and start drinking wine. Instead, our guide began by taking us outside the Manousakis family home, where we learnt more about the family behind the winery.

This was a nice way to start because it gave Manousakis a much more personal feel. We’d already heard some of the story behind Cretan wine during the drive, but now we were learning about the family that actually created the winery we were visiting.

We were told that founder Ted Manousakis is still alive, while his daughter Alexandra has taken over the running of the winery, continuing what her father started.

One detail we particularly liked was learning about the artistic side of the family. Alexandra is also an artist, which helps explain the distinctive artwork and labelling you’ll see across Manousakis wine bottles.

It’s something that’s easy to overlook when you’re simply looking at a bottle of wine, but once we’d heard the story behind the family and the artwork, the labels suddenly had a little more meaning.

Starting the tour here worked really well. Before we’d seen the production process or tasted any wine, we had already been introduced to the people and story behind Manousakis – making it feel much more like a family winery than simply another stop on a wine tour.

How Wine Is Made at Manousakis Winery

After learning about the Manousakis family, we moved on to one of the most interesting parts of the tour – seeing how Manousakis wine is actually made.

Our guide took us through the winemaking process step by step, explaining what happens from growing and harvesting the grapes through to fermentation, ageing and eventually bottling the finished wine.

There was a surprising amount of detail throughout this part of the tour, but it never became difficult to follow. You certainly don’t need to know much about wine beforehand to enjoy it.

1. Growing & Harvesting the Grapes

It all starts with the grapes.

Our guide talked us through the different grape varieties used by Manousakis and explained how the grapes themselves, along with the conditions in which they’re grown, ultimately influence the wine that ends up in your glass.

Once the grapes reach the required level of ripeness, they’re harvested and brought into the winery to begin the production process.

This was where some of what we’d learnt about Cretan wine during the journey from Chania started to come together. Before this tour, it was easy to think mostly about what happens once the grapes reach the winery. In reality, much of the character of the finished wine starts in the vineyard.

2. Crushing & Pressing

Once harvested, the grapes need to be processed.

Our guide showed us the equipment used during production and explained how the grapes are handled before their juice moves on to the next stages of winemaking.

The exact process can vary depending on the wine being produced, but being able to see the production areas while having everything explained made it much easier to understand than simply reading about how wine is made.

3. Fermentation

Next came fermentation – the stage where grape juice begins its transformation into wine.

Our guide explained how yeast converts the natural sugars within the grapes into alcohol and talked us through how this part of the process is managed at the winery.

Again, there was plenty of information available if you wanted it, but it was presented in a way that made sense even if you’ve never been on a winery tour before.

It was then time to see what happens to some of the wine after fermentation.

4. Inside the Manousakis Wine Cellar & Ageing Process

The cellar was probably the most interesting part of the Manousakis Winery tour for us.

Surrounded by barrels of ageing wine, our guide went into considerably more detail about what happens during the ageing process and the impact it can have on the finished bottle.

We learnt about the different casks used to age wine, why a winemaker might choose one over another and how those decisions can influence the characteristics of the finished wine.

Our guide also discussed the different grape varieties used at Manousakis and how the winemaking and ageing process can vary depending on what they’re trying to produce.

This wasn’t simply a case of walking through a picturesque wine cellar, taking a photograph and moving on. There was plenty of explanation, plenty of detail and the opportunity to ask questions.

For that reason, we think this part of the tour would be particularly interesting for wine enthusiasts. There’s enough depth here to make the experience worthwhile even if you already know considerably more about wine than the average visitor.

The Cost of Producing Wine Surprised Us

One of the most interesting parts of the cellar visit had nothing to do with tasting wine at all.

Our guide gave us a rough breakdown of some of the costs involved in producing a bottle of wine.

We won’t try to repeat the individual figures because there was a lot of information to take in, but we remember being genuinely surprised by just how expensive the process can become.

When you start considering the vineyards, grapes, production equipment, casks, ageing time, storage, bottling and everything else involved, you begin to understand that there’s considerably more behind the price of a bottle than you might initially think.

It gave us a completely different appreciation for the finished product – particularly when you’re looking at wines that may have spent significant time ageing before they’re ever sold.

For us, this was where the tour went beyond simply being an enjoyable afternoon of wine tasting. We were actually learning something about the wine industry and what goes into producing the bottle sitting on the table.

5. Bottling the Manousakis Wines

After learning about the ageing process, we moved on to the final stage we were shown: bottling.

We got to see where the finished Manousakis wines are bottled before being labelled and prepared to leave the winery.

It completed the process nicely. We’d now followed the journey from grape to bottle – learning about growing and harvesting, production, fermentation and ageing before finally seeing how the finished wine is bottled.

There was also a nice connection back to the Manousakis family story we’d heard when we first arrived. Having learnt about Alexandra Manousakis and her background as an artist, we now had a little more appreciation for the distinctive artwork and labels we’d see on the finished bottles.

By this point, we’d spent a good amount of time learning about how Manousakis wine gets into the bottle.

There was only one thing left to do.

Drink it.

Manousakis Winery Wine Tasting

After seeing how the wine goes from grape to bottle, it was finally time for the part we’d been waiting for – the Manousakis wine tasting.

We sat down and worked our way through five different Manousakis wines, including a mixture of reds, whites and rosé.

One of the wines we tried was made from Roussanne, a white grape variety that you’ll hear quite a bit about at Manousakis. Having just spent time learning about the different grapes, production methods and ageing process, the tasting was much more interesting than simply being presented with five glasses of wine.

Our guide continued talking us through each wine as we tasted it, explaining what we should be looking for and some of the characteristics of the different wines.

We were also shown how to properly taste wine – looking at the wine, smelling it and then tasting it rather than immediately drinking it.

If you’ve been to plenty of wine tastings before, some of this will probably be familiar. However, if this is your first wine tasting or winery tour, it’s a really nice introduction and there was absolutely no expectation that you needed to know anything about wine beforehand.

And after spending the earlier part of the tour learning how much work and money goes into producing a bottle, we certainly had a little more appreciation for what was now sitting in our glasses.

Eating at Manousakis Winery

One important thing to explain about our experience is that we specifically booked a version of the Manousakis tour that included a meal.

This isn’t necessarily included with every tour, so don’t assume you’ll receive the exact same food when booking. However, Manousakis has its own restaurant, and food can be purchased to enjoy alongside your wine tasting even when a meal isn’t included in your particular tour.

We’re very glad ours included it.

We started with stuffed vine leaves and a Cretan salad, and the salad came with some of the best mizithra cheese we had during our entire stay in Crete.

Mizithra is a traditional Greek cheese you’ll come across frequently in Crete, but the one we had at Manousakis really stood out. It worked brilliantly with the fresh ingredients in the Cretan salad and was easily one of the highlights of the meal.

For the main course, we had lamb giouvetsi, while there was also a stuffed vegetable option for vegetarians.

The lamb giouvetsi was exactly the sort of dish we wanted alongside Cretan wine – slow-cooked lamb served with orzo in a rich sauce. Combined with the wine, the surroundings and everything we’d learnt during the tour, sitting down for the meal was a great way to finish the experience.

We also liked that the food wasn’t treated as completely separate from the wine. By this stage, we’d spent the tour learning about Manousakis, seeing how its wines were produced and tasting several of them, so finishing with proper Cretan food made the whole experience feel much more complete.

If you’re booking the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania, we’d definitely recommend checking whether a food-inclusive option is available for your date. If it isn’t, we’d still consider ordering something from the restaurant to enjoy alongside your tasting.

👉 Check the latest Manousakis Winery Tour options, availability and inclusions before booking.

If you enjoyed the food at Manousakis Winery, there are plenty of other traditional restaurants worth discovering nearby. We’ve shared our favourites in our Chania restaurant guide.

What Wines Does Manousakis Winery Produce?

One name you’ll see repeatedly during a visit to Manousakis is Nostos – the name used across much of the winery’s range.

What makes Manousakis particularly interesting is its combination of international Rhône grape varieties and grapes associated with Crete.

Four of the most important varieties at the winery are:

• Roussanne – a white grape and one of the wines we specifically remember trying during our tasting.
• Syrah – used to produce rich red wines and one of the original varieties planted by Manousakis.
• Grenache – another important red variety within the Nostos range.
• Mourvèdre – a later-ripening red grape used for some of the winery’s more powerful wines.

Manousakis also works with indigenous Greek and Cretan varieties, including Vidiano and Kotsifali.

This mixture is part of what makes the winery interesting. You’re in the foothills of the White Mountains in Crete, but you’re not simply tasting the same grape varieties at every stop.

During our own tasting, we tried five different wines across red, white and rosé, which gave us a good introduction to the range without it becoming overwhelming.

What Does Nostos Mean?

There’s also a story behind the name Nostos.

The Greek word is associated with returning home or homecoming, which ties directly into the story of founder Ted Manousakis. After leaving Crete for the United States as a child, he eventually returned to his roots and created the winery in the village of Vatolakkos.

Once you’ve heard that story at the beginning of the tour, the Nostos name suddenly makes a lot more sense.

You don’t need to remember the names of every grape before visiting – we certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to turn the tour into a wine exam.

Part of the enjoyment is allowing the guide to explain the differences and then deciding which Manousakis wine you actually enjoy drinking the most.

Can You Visit Manousakis Winery Without a Tour?

Yes, you can visit Manousakis Winery independently. You don’t have to book an organised tour from Chania to experience the winery.

Manousakis accepts visitors for wine tastings, winery experiences and food, although we’d recommend making a reservation in advance rather than simply turning up.

Visiting independently can make sense if you already have a hire car and want to build Manousakis into a wider day exploring the countryside around Chania.

However, there is one fairly obvious problem with driving yourself to a winery: someone has to drive back.

That’s one of the main reasons we were happy that we’d booked an organised Manousakis Winery tour from Chania. We were picked up directly from our hotel, had our guide with us throughout the experience and could both enjoy the wine tasting without having to think about who was driving afterwards.

The guide also added considerably more to the experience than simply providing transport. Our tour effectively started during the journey to Manousakis, with discussions about Cretan wine, the global wine market and the history of Crete before we’d even reached the winery.

Should You Visit Independently or Book a Tour?

If you simply want to visit the winery, have a tasting and perhaps eat at the restaurant, booking directly with Manousakis can be a perfectly good option.

If you’re staying in Chania and want the transport, guided experience and wine tasting taken care of for you, we’d choose the organised Manousakis Winery tour.

That’s how we visited, and we’d happily do it the same way again.

👉 Check the latest prices and availability for the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania.

How to Get to Manousakis Winery From Chania

Manousakis Winery is located in Vatolakkos, around 20 km southwest of Chania, at the foothills of Crete’s White Mountains.

How long it takes to reach the winery will depend on exactly where you’re staying. From Domes Noruz Chania, our journey took around 40 minutes.

There are several ways to get there.

Organised Winery Tour From Chania

This is the option we chose and the one we’d recommend if everyone in your group wants to take part in the wine tasting.

Our tour included pickup and return transport, so we didn’t need to arrange anything ourselves. The journey also formed part of the experience, with our guide introducing us to Cretan wine and the history of the island along the way.

For us, this was easily the most convenient option.

👉 Check availability for the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania.

Driving to Manousakis Winery

If you’ve hired a car in Crete, you can also make your own way to Manousakis.

Driving gives you more freedom to incorporate the winery into a wider day exploring the countryside around Chania. However, if you’re planning to take part in a full wine tasting, remember that someone will need to remain within the legal alcohol limit to drive afterwards.

For that reason alone, we’d personally favour organised transport if wine tasting is the main reason for your visit.

👉 Planning to hire a car in Crete? We compare the best ways to find and compare rental cars in our car rental comparison guide, including what to check before you book.

Taxi or Private Transfer

Another option is arranging a taxi or private transfer from Chania.

This gives you some of the flexibility of visiting independently without requiring someone in your group to drive.

If choosing this option, we’d arrange your return journey in advance rather than relying on finding transport once you’re ready to leave the winery.

Whichever option you choose, we’d also recommend booking your Manousakis visit or tour in advance, particularly if you’re visiting Crete during the busy summer months.

Who Is the Manousakis Winery Tour Best For?

One of the things we liked most about the Manousakis Winery Tour is that you don’t need to be a wine expert to enjoy it.

Our guide explained everything in enough detail to keep wine enthusiasts interested, while making the winemaking process easy to understand if you’ve never stepped inside a winery before.

We’d particularly recommend Manousakis for:

• Wine enthusiasts – the cellar, ageing process, different grape varieties and level of detail from our guide made this much more than a basic tasting.
• First-time wine tasters – you’ll be shown how to properly taste wine and don’t need any previous knowledge.
• Couples – wine, Cretan food and the countryside make this an easy experience to recommend for couples visiting Chania.
• Honeymooners and anniversaries – if you want to do something different from another day at the beach, a winery visit makes for a memorable afternoon together.
• Foodies – particularly if you can book a food-inclusive experience like we did, or plan to order food from the restaurant alongside your tasting.
• Anyone wanting to see another side of Crete – Chania’s beaches and Old Town understandably get most of the attention, but heading inland gives you a completely different experience of the island.

Who Might Not Enjoy It?

If you have absolutely no interest in wine or how it’s produced, there are probably better ways to spend your time in Chania.

Likewise, if your priority is simply drinking as much wine as possible, this probably isn’t the experience you’re looking for. A large part of what made Manousakis so enjoyable for us was learning about the winery, the family and the production process before the tasting began.

For everyone else – and particularly anyone curious about Cretan wine – we’d have no hesitation recommending it.

Manousakis Winery vs Other Chania Wine Tours

There are several excellent wine tours in Chania, but we’d choose Manousakis if your main priority is the winery and the wine itself.

What stood out for us was the depth of the experience. We weren’t simply taken somewhere to sample a few Cretan wines. We learnt about the Manousakis family, followed the winemaking process from grape to bottle, spent time in the cellar learning about ageing and casks, saw the bottling process and then finished with the tasting.

That makes Manousakis particularly easy to recommend to wine enthusiasts or anyone visiting a proper winery for the first time.

However, it isn’t necessarily the best option for everyone.

If you’re more interested in Cretan food alongside wine, there are tours around Chania combining wine tasting with olive oil, cheese, honey and other local produce.

Alternatively, if you’re celebrating a honeymoon or anniversary and want a longer, more premium day out, there are small-group experiences combining wineries and olive oil with a journey into the Cretan mountains and lunch at Milia Mountain Retreat.

For us, the choice is fairly simple:

Choose Manousakis if the winery experience is the priority. Choose one of the alternatives if you want wine to form part of a wider food or countryside experience.

We’ve compared our three favourite options separately, including who we think each experience is best suited to.

👉 Read our guide to the best wine tours in Chania before deciding which one to book.

Is Manousakis Winery Worth Visiting?

Yes – Manousakis Winery is absolutely worth visiting if you’re staying in Chania.

Having experienced the tour ourselves, we’d happily recommend it and would visit again.

What impressed us most was the amount of substance behind the experience. Manousakis is a beautiful place to sit and drink wine, but the tour doesn’t rely on the setting alone.

We learnt about the Manousakis family and the history behind the winery, followed the winemaking process from grape to bottle, explored the cellar, learnt about different casks and ageing, saw where the wines are bottled and were given a surprisingly detailed insight into the costs involved in producing wine.

Then, of course, you get to drink it.

Our tasting included five different Manousakis wines across red, white and rosé, with our guide explaining what we were drinking and showing the group how to properly taste wine.

We’d also recommend eating at the winery if you have the opportunity. We booked a special version of the tour that included a meal, and sitting down to Cretan food after exploring the winery was the perfect way to finish. The Cretan salad with mizithra was particularly memorable – the cheese was some of the best we ate during our entire stay in Crete.

Our Manousakis Winery Verdict

The biggest compliment we can give Manousakis is that we think it works for both complete beginners and people who are genuinely interested in wine.

If you’re new to wine tasting, everything is explained without making you feel like you should already know what you’re doing.

If you’re already enthusiastic about wine, there’s enough detail in the cellar, production process, grape varieties and ageing discussion to keep things interesting.

Add in the small-group transport from Chania, an excellent guide, five wines and the option to enjoy Cretan food at the winery, and this became one of our favourite experiences during our time in Chania.

Would we book the Manousakis Winery Tour again? Absolutely.

👉 Check the latest prices and availability for the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania.

Final Thoughts: Our Manousakis Winery Tour Review

Manousakis Winery was one of those experiences that reminded us why it’s worth occasionally heading away from the beaches and exploring a completely different side of Crete.

We went expecting a good winery tour and some wine tasting. We came away having learnt far more than expected about Cretan wine, the Manousakis family and the work that goes into producing every bottle.

A lot of that was down to our guide. From the conversation during our journey from Chania to the detailed explanations inside the cellar, the tour felt informative without ever becoming too technical.

And, of course, the wine and food certainly helped.

If you’re staying in Chania and want to visit a winery, Manousakis would be our first choice. It’s particularly good if you want to do more than simply taste wine and actually understand what you’re drinking and how it’s produced.

For us, it’s an easy recommendation and an experience we’d happily book again.

👉 Check prices and availability for the Manousakis Winery Tour from Chania.

Still deciding? We’ve also compared Manousakis with two very different experiences in our guide to the best wine tours in Chania.

Manousakis Winery FAQ

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