Cyprus is a wine-growing island in the eastern Turkey/mediterranean">Mediterranean, located 80 km from the Southern coast of Turkey and a little further from the western coast of Syria. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean. It measures 140 miles (225 km) from east to west and about a third of that distance from North to south.
The Cypriot wine industry was at its peak in the Middle Ages and has seen a steady and progressive decline over the following centuries.
The location of the island once made it a useful port of call for voyages from Greece and Italy to Egypt and the Levant. Cyprus was of great use to medieval merchants and traders. Not only did the island's wine find markets abroad, especially in southern Europe, but the ships that exported the wines were a market in their own right.
The downside is that Cyprus was not only useful as a Trading post.
It was also desirable as a strategic military stronghold. Over the millennia, the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians and Venetians ruled the island. Later, the Ottoman and British empires added Cyprus to their conquered lands. Several hundred years later Madeira served the merchants and armies of the Eastern Atlantic in the same way.
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