GEORGIA: THE COUNTRY THAT GAVE WINE TO THE WORLD

Longtime Amaro Wine Club members may remember that in the first four months of 2023 we had series theme “Wines Behind the Iron Curtain” in which we covered a different country each month (Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic ) that fit the profile of a country that was “behind” the figurative “iron curtain” of communism during the Cold War, excluded from a rapidly growing global wine market. These wines of these countries were largely inaccessible to the global wine market for the better part of the twentieth century and their viticulture was diminished due to restrictive economic policies. Georgia certainly fits this profile, but on steroids, as it was not just a satellite country of the USSR but a full-fledged member, and as such was systematically stripped of its viticulture in terms of infrastructure and biodiversity; a viticulture that had been developed over eight millennia. Yes, you read that correctly: eight thousand years. Hence we are doing more than introducing you to wines from a country that saw its wines hidden from the global market for 50 years; we are re-introducing you to wines from the oldest viticulture in existence, which is still employing the technology for winemaking that it invented at its inception.

If you’ve been in our wine club for even a few months you will have heard of how the Romans took a developed viticulture from Greece and spread and developed it exponentially throughout Europe. But wine did not begin in Greece or Italy. It began in Georgia. Archaeological findings at Gadachrili Gora, a Neolithic settlement about twenty miles south of Tbilisi, have dated winemaking activity to approximately 6000 BCE. The evidence is unambiguous: residue from fermented grapes was found in large clay vessels embedded in the floors of village homes. These findings, confirmed through analysis by the Georgian National Museum and the University of Toronto predate Greek winemaking by over three thousand years and predate the written word entirely. Georgia has more than 500 indigenous grape varieties. Sitting at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Georgian viticulture spread outward from the Caucasus through human migration, seeding wine culture across the ancient world, which is why Romans found it already present and ready for exploitation as they conquered their way through Europe.

What is equally interesting about Georgia’s ancient viticulture is that the winemaking methods it developed 8,000 years ago have not ever been abandoned. Grapes were fermented and aged in qvevri, large, egg-shaped clay vessels, sealed inside with beeswax and buried in the ground with only their rims visible above the earth. Underground, the vessel maintains a stable, cool temperature year-round, eliminating the need for mechanical temperature control during fermentation. The egg shape promotes convection currents as the wine ferments, allowing grape solids to rise and clarify without intervention, and the clay is slightly porous, permitting slow micro-oxygenation. In many ways, the qvevri is a more sophisticated aging vessel than anything that came after it, and its behavior has never been fully replicated by stainless steel, oak, or concrete. In 2013, UNESCO added the ancient Georgian qvevri winemaking method to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. In 2021, qvevri was granted Protected Geographical Indication status, the first non-food item to receive such designation. And yet it is a living technology, still in active use, still capable of producing wines that challenge everything we assume about how wine should be made. And let’s give Georgians credit for the trendy “orange wine” on top of everything else. Traditionally, for both red and white wine, they crush the grapes whole and pour the juice, skins, stems, and seeds together into the qvevri which is sealed, and covered with dirt while the contents ferment. This extended skin contact for white grapes produces what Georgians call amber wine, a category the rest of the world now calls orange wine.

And let’s give Georgians credit for the trendy “orange wine” on top of everything else. Traditionally, for both red and white wine, they crush the grapes whole and pour the juice, skins, stems, and seeds together into the qvevri which is sealed, and covered with dirt while the contents ferment. This extended skin contact for white grapes produces what Georgians call amber wine, a category the rest of the world now calls orange wine.

Decanter magazine: Model of what it looks like in a qvevri buried underground at Qvevri Wine Museum at Twins Wine House. (Image credit: Sylvia Wu)

Decanter magazine: Old qvevris found in Giuaani Winery. (Image credit: Sylvia Wu)

But all this almost disappeared. After the Soviet Red Army invaded Tbilisi in 1921, Georgia's ancient wine culture experienced the most destructive period in its history. Private winemaking families lost their land as estates were broken up and collectivized into state-run cooperatives. The goals of these cooperatives were entirely industrial: volume, consistency, and export to Soviet consumers. Quality was irrelevant. Quantity was everything. The USSR's wine ministry relocated vineyards from hillsides to flat agricultural fields where yields were higher and mechanization was easier. Indigenous grape varieties that did not meet Soviet productivity targets were uprooted. Out of the more than 500 grape varieties native to Georgia, fewer than 20 were deemed worthy of continued planting under Soviet five-year plans. Qvevri were replaced by stainless steel tanks. The marani, the Georgian wine cellar long considered the holiest room in a family home, was reduced to a production facility or erased entirely, replaced by sterile Soviet concrete. Worse yet, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, faced with a public health crisis rooted in alcoholism, launched an anti-alcohol campaign that resulted in uprooting vast vineyard areas to the extent that Georgia lost an estimated 75 percent of its total vineyard area. According to the country's National Wine Agency, Georgia had approximately 150,000 hectares of vineyards during the Soviet era. By 2006, only 36,000 remained.

Yet families with a single acre of land continued to make wine privately, in basements and backyards, using qvevri that had been in their families for generations. Winemakers foraged grapes from wild vines on hillsides and forest edges. The tradition was pushed underground—sometimes quite literally—but it was never extinguished. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Georgian winemakers did not need to reinvent their culture. They only needed to unearth it. The revival since independence has been extraordinary. A new generation of small, family-owned producers has returned to indigenous varieties, traditional qvevri methods, and organic farming.

Our three wines this month are drawn from three different regions of Georgia and three different indigenous grapes, but they share a common thread: each one is made naturally with minimal intervention, and each one represents a producer who has chosen the difficult, deliberate path of working with what Georgia has always had rather than what the wider wine market might expect.

Decanter magazine: Qvevris being placed at the winery Koncho & Co. (Image credit: Sylvia Wu)

GEORGIA: THE COUNTRY THAT GAVE WINE TO THE WORLD

https://www.winesgeorgia.com/appellations/https://www.winesgeorgia.com/appellations/

SAPERAVI: GEORGIA'S MOST IMPORTANT RED GRAPE

The Saperavi varietal is rare in the wine world in that it is a teinturier grape, meaning it has red pigment not only in its skin but in its flesh. Let’s put it this way: if you were to press the average red grape for only its juice allowing no contact with its skins, the wine would be indistinguishable from a white wine in the glass because the flesh of a red grape is the same color (i.e., between white, and yellowish green) as that of a white grape. But with a teinturier grape, the juice by itself produces deep pink wine. As a result, Saperavi, especially when macerated with the usual Georgian ample skin contact method, is almost black in the glass, with a tannic structure capable of aging for decades. Saperavi is the country's most planted red variety. It thrives particularly in Kakheti, Georgia's eastern wine heartland, which accounts for roughly 80 percent of the country's production.

George Wolski, grandson of the founder.

Featured April Amaro Wine Club Georgian wine: Andria Gvino Saperavi Khashmi (2021)
VARIETALS: Saperavi

Despite the breaking apart of the old wine industry by the USSR, Andria Gvino can claim a beginning in 1984—seven years before the end of the Soviet Empire in December 1991—when Alexander Wolski built a family wine cellar in the village of Khashmi in Kakheti's Iori Valley for personal consumption, making the wine in the ancient style and passing the production down through his son and his son. Khashmi is a distinctive microclimate, elevated yet protected by mountain ridges that allow a dry terroir that doesn’t require pest repellant. The vines are ungrafted and own-rooted, having never been exposed to phylloxera as a result of Georgia's geographic isolation.

The Saperavi grapes are hand-harvested, de-stemmed by hand, and spontaneously fermented using indigenous yeasts in qvevri. No sulfites or fining agents are added and the wine is bottled unfiltered.

FOOD PAIRINGS: slow-braised beef, lamb chops, grilled pork, venison or other game, mushroom-based dishes, aged hard cheeses, spiced meat stews

TSITSKA: A WHITE GRAPE FROM GEORGIA'S WESTERN HILLS

The region of Imereti, in western Georgia, represents a different winemaking tradition from the better-known Kakheti region. Where Kakheti is famous for long, full skin-contact wines with deep tannin and amber color, winemakers in Imereti practice a more moderate approach: shorter maceration times for lighter body and aromatic delicacy. Tsitska is Imereti's most important white grape, a late-ripening variety prized for its high natural acidity and citrus-forward aromatic profile. It has been grown in the mountainous terrain of the region for millennia and is rarely found outside of Georgia.

Featured April Amaro Wine Club Georgian wine: Pheasant's Tears Tsitska (2024)
VARIETALS: Tsitska

Pheasant's Tears was founded in 2007 by an unlikely partnership: Gela Patalishvili, a Georgian whose family has been making wine for eight generations, and John Wurdeman, an American painter who first discovered Georgian culture at age fifteen through a recording of Georgian polyphonic folk music. Wurdeman moved to Georgia in 1996, and the two men's shared passion for traditional winemaking led to the creation of what has become one of the most important natural wine producers in the country.

The name comes from an old Georgian legend that only the finest wine can move a pheasant to tears of joy. The winery works with 117 identified indigenous Georgian grape varieties, and 40 more still under research, helping preserve a genetic diversity that the Soviet era came close to extinguishing. Beyond the winery itself, Wurdeman helped found Vino Underground, Tbilisi's first natural wine bar, and co-founded Georgia's Natural Wine Association. The winery's role in Georgia's modern wine renaissance has been outsized.

The Tsitska for this vintage is sourced from vineyards in the Terjola township of Imereti, planted on clay over limestone bedrock. The grapes are destemmed and spend three days on their skins before being racked into stainless steel for aging, two very un-Georgian techniques but perfect for capturing the varietal’s naturally delicate aromatics. The wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered, with no added sulfur.

FOOD PAIRINGS: grilled white fish, oysters, shellfish, light pasta with olive oil and herbs, fresh ricotta or chevre, roasted chicken, spring vegetable dishes

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American partner and artist John Wurdeman.

Georgian partner Gela Patalishvili

CHINEBULI: A KARTLI VARIETY MADE ENTIRELY IN QVEVRI

The Kartli region, in central Georgia, surrounds the ancient capital of Mtskheta and the modern capital Tbilisi, and it is the crossroads through which Georgian wine culture has always passed. Yet, it is underrepresented in the international market. Kartli's wines tend toward lighter body and higher acidity than Kakhetian wines, shaped by cooler elevations and different soil compositions.

Chinebuli is a white grape native to Kartli and is characterized by high acidity, delicate floral aromatics, and a capacity for complexity when made with traditional qvevri methods. Like most Georgian indigenous varieties, it nearly disappeared during the Soviet era.

Niko Chochishvili in his element

Featured April Amaro Wine Club Georgian wine: Kapistoni Chinebuli Qvevri Unfiltered Natural Wine (2024)
VARIETALS: Chinebuli

Kapistoni Winery is family-owned located in the village of Saguramo in the Mtskheta region, about thirty minutes north of Tbilisi, in the Saguramo Mountain Range. Niko Chochishvili is a seventh-generation Georgian winemaker; however, he emigrated to the United States as a teenager, went to military college there, became an American citizen, and served in the US Army reaching the rank of Captain before taking early retirement to return to Georgia and continue the family's winemaking tradition. The name Kapistoni was his grandfather's exclamation upon tasting a truly excellent wine.

The Chinebuli grapes are sourced from the Kartli region and are fermented and aged entirely in qvevri (the estate has 58 qvevri of different sizes). The grapes see six months of maceration on skins in qvevri, with four rackings to clean vessels during that period to achieve natural clarification. The wine is bottled unfiltered and unfined. This wine is essentially the archetypal full-bodied Georgian amber wine.

FOOD PAIRINGS: roast chicken or turkey, grilled pork, seafood with rich sauces, aged cheeses, spiced rice dishes, roasted root vegetables