On the road in Europe's new wine frontier
Georgia boasts some of the world's most unique wines: I went to investigate. Plus: what I've been drinking this week
As I stepped forward to shake George Margvelashvili’s hand, he asked, “are you feeling OK?” I wasn’t, really, and it must have shown: the effects of the blistering heat in Kakheti, eastern Georgia, of two big tastings that morning and a vast lunch before our arrival at George’s Tbilvino winery were taking their toll. Nevertheless, half an hour later I was enjoying a tasting of his wines in the shade of towering outdoor stainless-steel tanks, while tucking into astonishing pork kebabs cooked over vine prunings. Georgian hospitality stretches the limits of your appetite in this way.
Georgia, a small country sandwiched between Russia and Turkey on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, has a proud winemaking tradition – indeed it is where wine was invented, 8,000 years ago. Georgians are enormously proud of this, and wine plays a more central role in the national culture than in any other country I can think of. Yet Georgian wine was little known in the UK only a decade ago.
Since then, Georgian producers have got some of their wines on sale in major UK supermarkets including Marks & Spencer, and won plaudits from British critics and sommeliers across the board. There is far more recognition in the wine world of the country’s unique grapes and styles: only the weekend I was there, Britain’s Tim Atkin MW and other international wine luminaries were in town to judge at the national wine exhibition.
This increased profile is due to the hard work of big but forward-looking producers like Tbilvino, as well as a slew of small, often natural-wine producers who have helped create a whole new wine subculture in the capital, Tbilisi. Plus they’ve had the dogged support of the country’s National Wine Agency, who brought me and a bunch of British sommeliers and wine trade people over last week.
Still befuddled from travelling all night via Istanbul, we began our exploration of Georgian wines over lunch at beautiful Sushabandi restaurant in downtown Tbilisi. This was our first supra (feast), a Georgian institution that I wrote about earlier this year : a long succession of different dips, salads, breads, kinkhali dumplings, fish and barbecued meats served at a long table, accompanied by many wines. As John Steinbeck wrote of his first supra in his classic A Russian Journal (1948), “I think it is the only meal or dinner we ever attended where fried chicken was an hors d’oeuvre, and where each hors d’oeuvre was half a chicken.”
Thus fortified, we embarked on a walk-around tasting of around 20 producers, all keen to show us their wines. For today the challenges facing Georgia and its wine industry face have gained a new urgency. Throughout its years as part of the Soviet Union, 1921-91, Georgia was famous in the rest of the USSR for its wine (and food) and exported most of its wine there. In 1991 that world collapsed: Georgia declared independence and soon after lurched into civil war, fomented in part by Russia, while its state-run wine industry plunged into crisis.
Since the advent of democracy in 2003, both the country and its wine industry have recovered spectacularly. Yet with Russia’s war against Ukraine since February 2022, Georgia’s future looks less certain. The Georgian Dream government looks cowed by Putin and last month passed a repressive law, modelled on those of the Russian dictator, that seeks to paint any organisations receiving any foreign funding as “foreign agents”. Meanwhile Russian emigrés and draft dodgers have flooded Tbilisi, forcing up property prices and rents.
The fact that the Georgian for “hello” is “gamarjoba” (“victory”) and “cheers!”, “gaumarjos!” (“to victory”) says a lot
Weeks of passionate mass protests in central Tbilisi have called for precisely the opposite geopolitical alignment: the capital is covered in EU flags and pro-EU and anti-Russian graffiti. This involves a fierce patriotism of a kind almost unimaginable in Britain, rooted in a long, hard history of resistance and proud identity, in this country of just four million people with a language that no-one else understands.
For me, the fact that the Georgian for “hello” is “gamarjoba” (“victory”) and “cheers!”, “gaumarjos!” (“to victory”) says a lot. One winemaker told me he wasn’t sure why Georgia had come only fourth in a poll of nations that hated Russia the most, after Ukraine, the Baltic nations and Poland (the UK came ninth.)
In the turn away from its former colonial master, so it is with Georgia’s wine industry too. Around 70 per cent of Georgian wine exports still go to Russia, primarily cheaper, mass-produced reds in the semi-sweet style beloved of Georgia’s less-than-discriminating northern neighbour. Quite aside from the presence of Russian troops in the heart of Georgia in the puppet “separatist” enclaves of Abkhazia and “South Ossetia”, Putin has made clear that he can exert economic pain too, if he chooses. The quality-minded section of the Georgian wine industry, at least, would rather avoid that by seeking new markets in Europe and elsewhere.
Europe is thus dreamt of as both the political and vinous salvation of Georgia. EU membership is an ambitious goal – but a place for Georgian wines on western Europe’s tables seems more rapidly achievable.
Can they do it? On the strength of last week’s tastings, the certainly can. But the British public may need a bit of education in Georgian wine along the way.
Georgian whites made in a conventional, or as they call it, “European” style, are relatively straightforward. The country’s most-planted white grape, Rkatsiteli (Georgian is notable for its unpronounceable clumps of consonants) makes fresh, clean wines not a million miles from some Italian and Greek styles. It was probably in part thanks to the day’s heat, but I loved Tbilvino’s Rkatsiteli 2023: fresh, clean, bright and floral. Elsewhere other styles are breaking through here inspired by the natural wine movement: I liked Dakishvili’s lightly fizzy pet nat 2023, made from fine local white grape Kisi, peachy fruit with a dry finish.
However, when that white wine is fermented in the traditional qvevri, things start to change quickly. Qvevri are earthenware vessels buried underground with just their necks showing; they can look like a medium-sized amphora or, more often, hold up to 2,000 litres. Traditionally the wines are fermented in them and then left to settle and stabilise during the winter, being racked off in the spring after harvest.
This is the basic winemaking technology first used in Georgia eight millennia ago. When used to make whites, it produces orange- or amber-coloured wines as the wine slowly takes on tannins from the grapes skins; this is the technique borrowed by the first (Italian) pioneers of orange wine, and the root of the current orange wine craze.
Made in the traditional style, these can be quite big wines and Georgians emphasise their suitability for matching with hearty dishes such as barbecued meats. We tasted at Nareklishvili Winery late one afternoon, while still implausibly full from one of the full-scale supras that were a feature of both lunch and dinner on this trip. But Georgians are endearingly incapable of serving wine, even just for tasting, without food – lots of it. So with the fried quail legs and platters of fruit and nuts which I manfully tackled, I enjoyed Ivane Nareklishvili’s Premium Rkatsiteli qvevri 2018, a dark amber colour with almost marmitey umami and rich, complex layers or orange and tannin.
Or for instance at Kardanakhi 1888 winery, we tasted an astonishing Tsarapi Rkatsiteli 2020 qvevri. It had 15.9 per cent alcohol, except it really didn’t feel it: dark amber, bursting with citrus and dried fruits aromas, big and complex on the palate.
Nowadays, however, winemakers can also play many tunes on the traditional qvevri method: keeping the juice on all of its skins, and maybe stems as well, or just a proportion of them, for varying lengths of time. All such styles have more weight, breadth and usually tannin than a white made conventionally in stainless steel tanks, though usually less than more traditional qvevri whites.
Thus Ethno Winery, a small organic producer, make their Rkatsiteli qvevri from destemmed grapes, softening the final tannins, though it still gets up to seven months in qvevri followed by a year to settle in stainless steel tanks. The 2021 is wonderfully harmonious – warm, supple, warm and balanced. Likewise Tbilvino’s flagship Qvevris Kisi 2022, also destemmed and deliberately targeted at the Western market: classic orange notes and qvevri depth, but smooth and well integrated, almost oily.
As for the red wines, the vast majority at least in Kakheti, the eastern winemaking heartlands, are made from Saperavi. The signature Georgian red grape, it makes big, powerful wines high in acidity – the latter especially if they are made entirely in stainless steel. Meanwhile the traditional qvevri method makes even more deeply concentrated Saperavis.
As with whites, just how long red wines are kept on the skins can make a big difference. Vazisubani Estate’s Saperavi 2021 has up to three months in qvevri, a shorter spell than is traditional, and I loved its well-integrated tannins and acidity. But I also enjoyed some Saperavis made with more concessions to western tastes, such as the same estate’s Georgian Sun Saperavi-Aleksandrouli 2022. Here the winemaker softens the Saperavi with the lighter Alexandrouli grape of the central Imereti region: the result is quite easy drinking but still distinctively Georgian.
Alternatively, Saperavis from a clutch of named appelations in Kakheti, notably Mukuzani, are instead matured in oak barrels, such as GWS’s fine Tamada Grand Reserve Saperavi 2017: after 14 months in oak barrels, this spicy wine is complex and impressively long.
There is inevitably a debate about how far to soften the country’s traditional styles to appeal to international palates. But however much such moves may be scorned by the country’s burgeoning natural wine sector, it’s notable that 98 per cent of Georgian wine is still made using indigenous grapes grown almost nowhere else. Producers I talked to showed little interest in trying international varietals, despite successful experiments such as Askaneli’s very good Chardonnay-dominated Prima cuvée.
Still, the pace of change in Georgia is astonishing. On my last day in Tbilisi I wandered around the old town, less magical than when I’d visited it on my first night back in the capital but still full of ramshackle charm. I stopped off at the Kancellaria natural wine bar and ordered a white Tsitska/Tsolikouri blend, slightly cloudy in a very natural style. The wine wasn’t really to my taste but I couldn’t help but admire the energy and enterprise of these young Georgians, just decades after escaping dictatorship and near-collapse.
At the top of the hill above the old town looms a huge silver statue of Kartlis Deda, the Mother of Georgia. In her right hand is a sword, in her left a goblet of wine. Her message is clear: enemies cross the Georgians at their peril, but come in friendship and you will be greeted with wine and astonishing hospitality. Their drive to take that wine to the rest of the world deserves to succeed.
Most of the producers mentioned above have UK importers. Tbilvino make M&S’s Found range Saperavi; the same producer’s excellent Quevris Kisi is currently a steal at Waitrose on offer at £11.99 (it’s a steal at full price, really) and their Qvevris Rkatsiteli is in Majestic. Nareklishvili’s Qvevri Wine Cellar wines are available at Lea and Sandeman, while the Wine Society has several wines from producer Teleda.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Domaine du Cros “Lo Sang del Pais” Marcillac 2019 - this is the best known red from the obscure south-western French appellation of Marcillac. Like the rest of this swathe of wild southern territory - east of Bordeaux, north of the Languedoc and south of the Massif Central - Marcillac never really recovered from the double hammer blows of philoxera ravaging its vines in the late nineteenth century and then First World War carrying off many of its young men (if you doubt how much more populous this now-sleepy département of the Aveyron once was, check out the long columns of names on small village war memorials.) Wine production here almost died out but was rescued by a few determined growers: it won Appellation Contrôlée status in 1990. There are now around a dozen producers in the district, making reds from the tannic local Fer Servadou grape, all grown at altitudes of over 350 metres on steep, terraced slopes. Lovely fresh, crunchy red fruit, so open, honest and frankly moreish. Cries out for pork fat of some sort - though I quite happily polished off half a bottle with a cheese omelette after my Greek evening class this week. But I still think of the village boys who never came home to work this harsh land. (This must have been hanging around in my cellar for a bit because everyone seems to be on the 2022 now - The Wine Society, Buonvino, Noble Green, Joseph Barnes and others; £10.50 from the Wine Society, from £14.50 elsewhere.)
Yzaguirre vermouth - I wrote earlier this year about my late conversion to Spanish vermouth and my education in it continues. My cocktail guru and friend Richard Godwin may chuckle but I hadn’t previously tried Yzaguirre (red) vermouth before picking up a bottle at well-stocked Exmouth Market Spanish deli and bodega Furanxo the other day. Yzaguirre are one of Cataluña’s oldest producers, supposedly using almost 80 herb and spice botanicals. It’s a classic Catalan vermouth flavour, maybe a touch sweeter than some but balanced by hints of bitter citrus and herbs. A lovely aperitif on ice with a couple of olives in it (Furanxo, Vinissimus, Sous Chef, Lunya and elsewhere, from £17.95.)
Natakhtari beer - Like many professional wine people, after a hard day’s wine tasting there’s actually nothing more I fancy than a beer - and in Georgia, Natakhtari is the most widely available local brew. Made locally by Turkish brewing giant Efes, it’s a quite malty lager with some body to it - and bliss after a day in the relentless summer heat of the Kakheti wine country in the East (available in the UK in some Georgian restaurants.)
Thank you for this mouth-watering read. I’ve tried a couple of the M&S and Wine Soc offerings, which were as distinctive as expected. Would love to get to Tbilisi one day, and hopefully that will remain a possibility for some time. So, for now, gaumarjos!