Avra Estiatorio

Some time has passed since Lawrence Durrell, in his book “The Greek Islands,” cited a friend’s claim that retsina tastes like “pure turpentine which has been strained through the socks of a bishop.” At Avra, a standout Greek restaurant in a Midtown pocket of skyscrapers that hasn’t quite escaped the Bloombergian thunderbolt, there are three types of the resinated wine, each boasting more organic credo than the next. The best is the Gaia Ritinitis Nobilis, which tastes like a waft of pine-scented air off the back of an Aeolian island in summer’s swelter—fresh and full of possibility.