The Green Side of Santorini: Vines, Quiet Fields and Easy Escapes

Santorini is not a green island. It is pumice, ash and lava rock, with barely any surface water and a summer that goes months without rain. Which makes what does grow here genuinely remarkable, and makes the search for shade and open ground a legitimate way to see the island away from the caldera crush.

The vineyards that look like nothing

Santorini's vines are trained into low basket-shaped coils called kouloura, woven into circles on the ground with the fruit growing protected in the middle. It is a response to two forces: relentless wind, and the sea mist that supplies moisture the rain does not. Drive inland and the fields look like scattered grey nests rather than vineyards, and that is exactly what you are looking at — some of the oldest ungrafted vine stock in Europe.

The white grape is Assyrtiko, mineral and bracingly dry, and the sun-dried dessert wine made here is Vinsanto. Several estates in the island's interior open for tastings with caldera views and a fraction of the Oia crowd.

The fields nobody photographs

The island's other crops are worth knowing. Fava, a yellow split pulse grown here for millennia and protected by name, is served warm with olive oil and raw onion in every good taverna. Santorini's cherry tomatoes are tiny, intense and low-water, and the old tomato-processing plant at Vlychada has been turned into a small industrial museum that is far more interesting than it sounds.

Where to walk

• The caldera path, Fira to Oia: around ten kilometres along the rim via Firostefani, Imerovigli and the ruined headland of Skaros Rock. Do it early, carry water, and wear real shoes — there is no shade.
• Pyrgos and Profitis Ilias: the island's highest village, topped by a Venetian-era castle quarter, with a monastery on the summit above it. The climb is short and the view takes in the whole island.
• Vlychada: a beach on the south coast where the wind has carved the pale cliffs into something lunar. Strange, quiet, and nothing like the caldera.

The escapes by water

Nea Kameni, the black volcanic islet in the middle of the bay, is a walk up a cinder cone to a steaming crater — hot, treeless and genuinely otherworldly. Boats usually pair it with the warm sulphur springs off Palea Kameni next door.

Better still, Thirasia. The small island across the caldera mouth was part of Santorini before the eruption split them, and it has kept the quiet: a handful of villages, a few tavernas, donkeys, and views back at the famous cliffs from the side nobody stands on.

Boat schedules to Thirasia are limited and seasonal, so check the current timetable at the port rather than relying on last year's.

Tip: Rent a car or a quad for one day and give it entirely to the interior — Pyrgos, Megalochori, Emporio, a winery and Vlychada. It is the cheapest day you will have on Santorini and, for many visitors, the one they remember.