The shape of Georgian wine#
Georgia treats wine as a household matter before it is an industry. Nearly every village between Tbilisi and the Black Sea has its marani, the cellar or yard where clay qvevri sit buried to the neck, and many growers keep a jar back for the family after selling the rest. That habit carried the qvevri through seventy Soviet years, along with more than 500 native grape varieties.
The map splits along the Likhi range. East of it, Kakheti grows roughly seventy percent of Georgia’s grapes in the hot, dry Alazani valley: Saperavi for reds, Rkatsiteli for whites that spend six months on their skins and come out amber. West of it, Imereti and mountainous Racha-Lechkhumi are humid and green; the whites are Tsitska and Tsolikouri, the vessel is called churi, and only a fraction of the skins goes back in. Kartli, around the capital, sits between with cool nights and a sparkling tradition.
There are also two Georgias in the bottle: the classic line from Prince Chavchavadze’s European cellar at Tsinandali in the 1840s to the large PDO houses of today, steel and oak and export pallets; and the family marani of one to five hectares, qvevri only, nothing added, which the outside world discovered around 2010. I pour both on every tour, usually at the same table, and let the wines argue.
Eight thousand years, briefly#
Fifty kilometres south of Tbilisi, at Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, pottery from about 6000 to 5800 BC carries tartaric acid residue, the chemical fingerprint of grape wine. Published in 2017 by the Georgian National Museum and the University of Toronto, it is the basis of the claim you will hear at every cellar door; what the pots actually prove has its own page.
In 1841 Prince Alexander Chavchavadze bottled his 1839 Saperavi at Tsinandali, the oldest documented Georgian bottle; in 1878 Prince Ivane Mukhranbatoni, trained in Bordeaux and Champagne, made the first vintage at Mukhrani. The Soviet Union chose volume: vineyard area more than doubled between 1950 and 1985, and the anti-alcohol campaign of 1985 pulled much of it up again.
Russia banned Georgian wine from 2006 to 2013, which forced producers to learn what Warsaw and Berlin wanted; UNESCO listed the qvevri method as intangible heritage in 2013. The differences between qvevri, karas and amphora come up on every tour, so I wrote them down.
Grapes: Saperavi, Rkatsiteli and a few hundred others#
Saperavi has pink flesh as well as dark skin, which is why its wines cannot be seen through. High acid keeps it fresh whether it goes dry into oak in the Mukuzani style, naturally semi-sweet as Kindzmarauli, or into qvevri. Rkatsiteli, the most planted white, is quiet in steel and something else after six months on skins and stems: dried apricot, walnut, tea-leaf tannin. Mtsvane Kakhuri adds aroma to Tsinandali blends; Kisi gives pear, apricot and green tea and is, to my taste, the best Kakhetian white on skins.
Kartli has Chinuri, late-ripening and high in acid, still or sparkling; Tavkveri for light red, rosé and pet-nat; and Shavkapito, “black cane”, the fuller red. The west answers with taut, saline Tsitska and softer Tsolikouri, often co-fermented, and the very dark Otskhanuri Sapere. Racha grows Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli for Khvanchkara, and Lechkhumi keeps Usakhelouri, “the nameless one”, a grape so scarce that its whole crop is a few tonnes a year.
The regions#
Georgia has around thirty protected appellations, some twenty of them in Kakheti. Four regions carry my tours.
Kakheti#
Two hours east of Tbilisi, Kakheti is the Alazani valley between the Greater Caucasus and the Gombori range, with vineyards at 250 to 800 metres on gravel, red clay and limestone. Telavi at 490 metres is the working capital; walled Sighnaghi at 836 metres is where guests want to sleep. Tibaani, near Sighnaghi, is where John Wurdeman and Gela Patalishvili keep the Pheasant’s Tears cellar; Kisiskhevi, near Telavi, holds Schuchmann and its Vinoterra qvevri line. Alaverdi monastery and its eleventh-century marani, Gremi and the Chavchavadze house fill the hours between cellars.
Kartli#
Kartli is the middle of the country, mostly within an hour of Tbilisi, with vineyards at 450 to 750 metres, hot days and a wind that keeps the nights cool. That acidity is why Ateni is the one PDO built around sparkling wine. In Chardakhi, Iago Bitarishvili farms two hectares of sixty-year-old Chinuri, organic since 2005, and makes two wines from it, one with skins and one without. A short drive away, Château Mukhrani replanted the old princely estate from 2002 and works Shavkapito, Goruli Mtsvane and Saperavi by Bordeaux methods, so the two philosophies sit an afternoon apart.
Imereti#
West over the Rikoti pass, Imereti is Kutaisi and the low, humid valleys of the Rioni, 150 to 350 metres on stony calcareous loams. The vessel is the churi, often buried in the garden, and the Imeretian method returns 20 to 50 percent of the skins for a few weeks to two months, so the whites stay pale gold and light in tannin. Ramaz Nikoladze in Nakhshirghele works a hectare and a half of Tsitska, Tsolikouri and Dzelshavi with no added sulfur; Baia and Gvantsa Abuladze in Obcha grow Krakhuna, Otskhanuri Sapere and Aladasturi on the family land, part of a young revival of Imeretian varieties.
Racha-Lechkhumi#
Up the Rioni gorge from Kutaisi, about an hour and a half to Ambrolauri at 550 metres, Racha-Lechkhumi is mountain country with over a metre of rain a year and cold autumn nights. Those nights are why Khvanchkara exists: Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli picked late in cold cellars stopped fermenting with three to five percent sugar left, and the raspberry-scented semi-sweet red became the best-known name in Georgian wine. Small family cellars in Khvanchkara and Bugeuli villages make it in qvevri or small tanks, and more of them now bottle a dry Aleksandrouli too.
Natural and classic in Georgia today#
The classic camp is the larger by volume and mostly Kakhetian: Tbilvino, Teliani Valley, Kindzmarauli Corporation, Badagoni, Schuchmann, Château Mukhrani, Tsinandali Estate. Steel and oak, PDO labels, correct sulfur, export pallets. Several run a qvevri line beside the classic range, Schuchmann’s Vinoterra among them, and I find these useful on the table: the vessel without the ideology.
The natural camp is small in hectares and loud in influence: family maranis of one to five hectares, farmed organically or biodynamically, wild yeast in qvevri, nothing added. Pheasant’s Tears, Okro’s, Iago’s Wine, Nikoladzeebis Marani and Baia’s Wine lead a field of a hundred or so. Ten growers founded the Natural Wine Association in Tbilisi in February 2017; its fair, Zero Compromise, runs each May, and Vino Underground in Sololaki has been the movement’s bar since 2012.
The two camps meet at the New Wine Festival on Mtatsminda, each May since 2010. Between them lies the largest group of all: village cellars that are neither certified nor industrial, most of Racha and Imereti among them. That middle ground is where I spend the most time, and it exports almost nothing, which is the best reason to travel.
What arrives on the table#
The supra is the meal as institution: a long table, a tamada who leads the toasts, and a rule that wine is drunk after a toast rather than sipped between them. Kakhetian tables lean on meat, Imeretian ones on walnuts and herbs.
Khachapuri comes as Imeruli with the cheese inside or Adjaruli as an open boat with an egg. Khinkali are the pleated dumplings you eat by hand, holding the knot; pkhali are spinach, beetroot or leek pounded with walnuts. Mtsvadi, pork grilled over vine cuttings, is the Kakhetian celebration dish; in spring chakapuli, lamb with tarragon and green plums, takes its place.
The pairings the locals make are the ones I keep: amber Rkatsiteli or Kisi with khachapuri and anything walnut; dry Saperavi with mtsvadi and sour tkemali plum sauce; Tsitska-Tsolikouri with river trout; Kindzmarauli or Khvanchkara with churchkhela, walnuts strung and dipped in thickened must, to close. Chacha, the grape spirit, arrives after, and I take one glass.
When to go and how to get there#
Mid-May to late June is green, with the New Wine Festival in Tbilisi. Mid-September to mid-October is rtveli, the harvest: whites from early September, Saperavi through October. Kakheti runs at 30 to 35 degrees in July and August, so I do not tour in high summer. Imereti picks into early November; in Racha early snow can close the passes after mid-October, so the mountains go early in a route.
Tbilisi has non-stop flights from Vienna in under four hours, and Vienna is an hour and a half from my door in Brno. Kutaisi has seasonal non-stops from Prague and Vienna in about three and a half hours; there is no non-stop Prague to Tbilisi. From Tbilisi, Sighnaghi and Telavi are about two hours, Kutaisi around four. Yerevan is five to six hours by road, which is how the two-country tour arrives.
The currency is the lari; cards work in towns and larger estates, cash in the villages. EU passports enter visa-free for up to a year. Racha roads are slow, so we travel by minibus with a driver and I keep the schedule loose.
How I tour Georgia#
Three routes. My Kakheti qvevri tour is a week from Tbilisi, family maranis and PDO houses on alternate days, and a supra or two. The western Georgia tour through Imereti and Racha flies into Kutaisi, lifts churi lids in Terjola and Baghdati and climbs to Khvanchkara. Armenia and Georgia: two cradles of wine in eleven days runs from Yerevan to Tbilisi with the karas of Armenia and the qvevri of Georgia on one table.
On every table I put a wine from a family qvevri and a wine from a classic cellar, and we talk about what each winemaker decided and why. I speak Russian, which still opens doors with the older growers; the younger ones answer in English. If you would rather build your own route, private tours start with an email and a map.
