The place#
Imereti is the western half of Georgia’s wine map, and the half most visitors never reach. It lies around Kutaisi, the old royal capital, where the Rioni comes down out of the Racha mountains and slows on its way to the Black Sea. The vines follow the Rioni and its tributaries, the Kvirila, the Chkherimela, the Dzirula and the Khanistskali, in small parcels between maize and walnut trees. I bring groups here after Kakheti, and it feels like a different country; in the glass it tastes like one.
Seventy percent of the region is mountain, and a cellar in Imereti is very often a family yard: a few clay vessels buried under a tree, a table beside them, a dog asleep on the lids.
I work from four places. Kutaisi itself, between 125 and 300 metres, with Bagrati cathedral on its hill and Gelati monastery, founded by King David the Builder in 1106, twenty minutes out. Terjola, half an hour east, where the village of Nakhshirghele sits at 197 metres. Zestaponi, also half an hour, a ferroalloy town with vines around it. And Baghdati, forty minutes south, with Obcha at 324 metres on the road into the hills.
Terroir: low, wet and green#
Almost everything here is the reverse of Kakheti. The altitude is modest, 50 to 500 metres, with most estates between 150 and 350. The Black Sea is about a hundred kilometres west and the climate is humid subtropical: cold wet winters, hot summers, more rain than the east and cooler nights. Vines here fight mildew, not drought.
The soils are stony loams rich in calcium carbonate and limestone, humus-carbonate on the gentler slopes, and heavy, moisture-holding clay around Terjola. That clay and the cool nights are why Tsitska and Tsolikouri keep their acidity so late. Picking runs into late October and sometimes early November, weeks after the Kakhetian whites around Telavi are already in.
The old western way was maghlari, vines run up living trees; you still see it in village yards. These grapes were selected for shade and rain, and they taste like it.
Grapes and styles: Tsitska, Tsolikouri, Krakhuna and the dark one#
Tsitska is the grape I use to introduce the region: high acid, green apple, a saline edge, and long the base of Georgian sparkling wine. Tsolikouri is the west’s most planted white, rounder, with pear and yellow plum; it also gives the semi-sweet Tvishi up in Lechkhumi. The two are often fermented together, Tsitska for the spine, Tsolikouri for the flesh, and that blend is the everyday white of Imereti.
Krakhuna is fuller and slightly waxy, and it takes to skin contact well, giving ambers of apricot and honey. Otskhanuri Sapere is the red: very dark, sharply acidic, moderate in alcohol, black cherry and violet. Aladasturi and Dzelshavi are the pale, crunchy reds of the west, closer to chilled Beaujolais than to anything from Kakheti. The region counts more than eighteen local varieties; I have not tasted them all.
The vessel is the churi, the Imeretian word for qvevri, often buried outdoors in the yard rather than under a marani roof. In Kakheti the whole mass of skins, seeds and often stems ferments with the juice and stays there six months. In Imereti only a portion of the skins goes back, traditionally without stems, for a few weeks to two months; each cellar has its own fraction, from a twentieth to a half. The result is paler and less tannic, more fruit and acidity than tea and walnut. I explain the vessels in qvevri, karas and amphora and the styles in orange wine and skin contact.
The appellation to know is Sviri, in Zestaponi municipality: dry white and amber from Tsolikouri, Tsitska and Krakhuna.
Producers to know#
Nikoladzeebis Marani in Nakhshirghele is the cellar I have visited most. Ramaz Nikoladze has bottled since 2007 on his grandparents’ parcel: 1.5 hectares of Tsitska, Tsolikouri and Dzelshavi on moist clay, farmed organically and biodynamically, about 6,000 bottles a year. The churi are buried in the garden. He separates the juice, returns 5 to 20 percent of the skins, seeds and stems, leaves the wine four to six months in clay, and adds nothing, sulfur included. The Tsitska is taut and saline with a light grip; the Solikouri, with a longer maceration, is named for his mentor Soliko Tsaishvili. Ramaz heads Slow Food in Georgia and co-founded Vino Underground, Tbilisi’s natural wine bar, in 2012.
Baia’s Wine in Obcha is the region’s best-known young estate. Baia Abuladze founded the label in 2015, in her early twenties, after winning a rural business grant; Forbes put her on its 30 Under 30 Europe list in 2019. Her parents grew grapes for the house. Her sister Gvantsa, who studied biodynamic winemaking in the Mosel, makes the reds under the Gvantsa’s Wine label. A little under three hectares without pesticides or fertilisers: Tsitska, Tsolikouri and Krakhuna, Otskhanuri Sapere and Aladasturi. The whites began with 5 to 10 percent of skins and some cuvées now spend about three months on them; the reds are destemmed, fermented on skins in qvevri and aged without them. Around 8,000 bottles a year, pet-nat included.
Archil Guniava in Kvaliti, near Zestaponi, makes natural wine in qvevri and is the cellar I add as a third stop when the timing works. John Wurdeman’s Pheasant’s Tears, whose home is Kakheti, also farms parcels at Vani and Terjola.
What a day here looks like on tour#
We sleep in Kutaisi. The morning is Gelati, before the coaches arrive. Then thirty minutes to Terjola, the visit that resets the group. There is no tasting room. The lids come off the churi in the yard, the wine is drawn with a ladle, and the winemaker talks fermentation while the neighbour’s chickens walk between the buried mouths.
Lunch is where Imereti argues its case. Imeruli khachapuri with the cheese inside, not on top; pkhali of spinach and beetroot bound with walnut; aubergine rolls with walnut paste; the fresh, squeaky local cheese; river trout. The Kakhetian table is meat and fire, this one is herbs and walnuts, and a Tsitska-Tsolikouri from the churi is the right weight for it. I pour a Kakhetian amber beside it so the two methods sit on the cloth, not in my description.
The afternoon is Obcha, forty minutes south, where the reds come out: an Otskhanuri Sapere that stains the glass and cuts through the walnut sauce, an Aladasturi light enough to chill. Dinner in Kutaisi is short; the day was the meal.
Practical#
Kutaisi airport is twenty-five minutes from the city; Wizz Air flies there non-stop from Prague and Vienna about three times a week, roughly 3 h 20 min, seasonally. For guests from Brno it is the easiest way into Georgia. From Tbilisi it is 220 to 230 kilometres, 3.5 to 4.5 hours depending on the Rikoti pass roadworks. Inside the region: Terjola 30 minutes, Zestaponi 30, Obcha 40. Ambrolauri and the Khvanchkara villages of Racha-Lechkhumi are 1 h 15 to 1 h 45 up the Rioni gorge, so Racha is a day trip from Kutaisi.
Best months are May to June, when the valleys are green, and late September to early November, when the western harvest is still running after Kakheti has finished. Bring a rain jacket in any month; cellar visits here happen in yards. Cards work in Kutaisi, cash is needed in the villages, and small-estate tastings, always by appointment, typically cost 30 to 80 lari a person.
Imereti is the first half of my western Georgia tour. A private tour can give it three or four days and add the Prometheus cave near Tskaltubo for the non-drinkers in the party.
