Life and business of an island
Greek islands are beautiful affairs: small patches of land, green with vines and olive trees in the blue Mediterranean. Alonnisos is no exception, as it takes the beauty of the Greek island as you imagine it to the highest degree. Part of a natural reserve, secluded and off the beaten track, it’s an island so small that for centuries it lived off the very vines and olive trees that make it beautiful and which – together with sheep and goat farming – formed the cornerstone of a typical subsistence agriculture known to all the islanders of the seven seas.
But when a phylloxera epidemic in the mid-1950s put an end to subsistence farming, things got bleak. And yes, tourism can be an effective way out, but it demands more than it gives: it sometimes asks people to trade their identity just for a few weeks of economic relief – not to mention its ecological impact on beaches and the sea, with the ecosystem depleted and in the worst cases totally disfigured.
For islanders, this is the oldest question in the world: how to survive without giving up what defines them?
Today, a possible answer may come in the form of a Social Business, i.e. companies without dividends, financially self-sufficient, whose profits are reinvested in the enterprise itself or used to start other similar ventures, with the aim of increasing social impact. A social business can help communities reconnect with their land, live off their labour, cultivate skills, produce goods, and reinvest in a better life. In the words of Mohammad Yunus, who first outlined the structure of a social business, “a good economic theory must empower people to use their talents to build their lives”.
Ktima Marco Alonnisos, a small wine and oil company designed specifically for Alonnisos, wants to operate as s social business. Its main objective is to generate profits to reinvest locally, spreading skills, creating agricultural networks, reviving Alonnisos’s beauty by encouraging the cultivation of vines and olive trees. Wine and oil production has always been the talent of Alonnisos, a talent unfortunately lost, which Ktima Marco intends to relaunch thanks to the genuine desire of the founder and his team to give back to Alonnisos and its inhabitants what they do best.

Ktima Marco: where we are now, where we are headed
We all know that producing a good wine, a wine of quality and character, is not an easy task. The same applies to Extra Virgin Olive oil – contrary to what the song says, a tree is not enough. The path we envisioned and we believe in is long and it involves natural as well as human and entrepreneurial dynamics.
It is necessary to build a capillary network system built on mutual trust: trust in the possibility of Alonnisos to debut in a highly competitive market such as the wine and oil market, and to start an activity that creates work, skills, and whose economic return is reinvested on the island.
Ktima Marco in this sense, in addition to supporting the initial investment, acts as an intermediary between the landowners, providing the entrepreneurial connections necessary to start an agricultural activity, such as the relationship with the European Union, allowing landowners to have the shares and know-how to produce grapes; and presides over a team of professionals that involves Alonnisos natives alongside specialised figures including architects, oenologists and entrepreneurs, chosen from among the best in the Italian and Greek scene.

Our first four years – what we like to call our pilot episode – have been a time of fine tuning, with a lot of effort put in investments, licensing, and above all networking with local owners and professionals. The results are tangible in our first batch of products: a white wine and a red wine, with small yet highly successful attempts at wine marketing limited to the island – thanks to the help of local restaurateurs; and a high-quality, top-rated Extra Virgin Olive oil.

The ultimate goal: to extend our island network and market a selection of wines from indigenous grape varieties, produced using the amphora method, and Extra Virgin Olive oil, all certified organic.