July 2022 Wine Club
Traditional Wines from Georgia
Welcome back to the wine club blog, everybody! We’re excited to be focusing our attention this month on the country of Georgia! Georgia is home to the oldest continuous winemaking tradition in the world as well as a crossroads of civilizations, so there is a lot to talk about here. Let’s start by situating it on a map:
Although geographically small, Georgia features a striking diversity of climate and terrain, from the Black Sea coast to the peaks of the Greater Caucasus. Its position between the Black and Caspian Seas has guaranteed its strategic importance to empire for most of written history, with various Greek, Roman, Turkic, Byzantine, Persian, and Russian empires conquering it. Despite this, Georgia has a history of fierce independence and resistance, functioning as a critical stopover on the Silk Road and flourishing as an independent kingdom well into the Middle Ages.
Georgian Wine: 8000 years of history
Georgia is home to the oldest continuous winemaking tradition on the planet. Ion spectroanalysis of pottery fabric samples from Shulaveris Gora, an ancient hill settlement on the southern slopes of the Mtkvari river valley, are the latest to be carbon dated to 6000 B.C. Excavations of these ancient settlements are currently underway, so expect to learn more in the coming years about Neolithic winemaking.
The thing that tickles me the most about this type of paleobotany is the third figure below, which compare spectrography results from several samples. If you look closely you’ll see they are using the same kind of analysis we teach and talk about all the time at Grandiflora: acid profiling! High concentrations of tartaric and malic acid are, even for 8000 year old pottery, telltale signatures of skilled viticulture and viniculture. Was the wine any good? Who knows! But it was definitely wine!
Of course, 8000 years ago, Georgia as a political or cultural assemblage didn’t exist. The people making this wine belonged to the Shulaveri-Shomu pottery culture which was in all likelihood trading wine, pottery, and most importantly knowledge across the Southern Caucasus. So what’s happened since then? Briefly:
Similar to many areas of the Middle East, the broad floodplains of the Kura and Mtkvari river valleys became populated by semi-nomadic pastoralists, eventually forming agricultural settlements, experimenting with metallurgy, and variously resisting and succumbing to invading barbarian hordes and empires, including the Scythians or Sasperians, Persians, and eventually the Romans. By the time of Roman conquest, this region had been formed into a kingdom called Iberia. Iberia became a province of the Roman Empire until it was conquered by the Sasanids, then the Byzantines. During Byzantine rule, and amidst a series of rebellions, King Bagrat III pulled off a coup that ended up with most of his cousins imprisoned in Constantinople and his son, George I, in line for the throne. It took 120 years for this dynasty to achieve independence from the Byzantine and Seljuk empires, and much of Georgia’s national identity was formed in the ensuing years of peace before the Mongol invasions. These destabilized the classical Georgian state, and with the collapse of its main military ally in the Byzantine empire, Georgia became embroiled in a series of wars of succession from which it never fully recovered. The modern state of Georgia formed out of the collapse of the Soviet Union and is enjoying a new era of independence.
Georgian Wine in cultural context
Throughout these periodic upheavals, the Kartvelians, as the Georgians have called themselves for the last 2000 years, have continued to make wine. It plays an important role both in their religion, which is an ancient Orthodox Christian tradition, and in social rituals. The most unique expression of Georgian wine culture is a type of feast called a supra.
A supra is a type of lavish feast thrown to mark special occasions, presided over by a toastmaster, called a tamada. A special occasion may simply be the fact of having company, and many travelogues of westerners in Georgia speak to the challenge of keeping up with the drinking. The tamada will begin a round of drinking by proposing a toast, introducing a topic with eloquent praise. However, unlike toasts we may be familiar with, only the one toasting drinks — and it is encouraged to drain your glass or horn. If you wish to speak, then, you must be prepared to drink, because it’s rude to speak outside of the toasting ritual. Contrastingly, but due to thousands of years of conflict, sobriety is highly valued, as the party could be interrupted by warfare at any moment. Furthermore, although the host is expected to pull out all stops for the feast, moderation in eating is also expected.
Georgian Wine: A lot of it is Orange
So let’s get to the wine! The most internationally celebrated style of Georgian wine is orange, or amber wine, made in qvevri (pronounced “kwe vree”), a traditional buried clay urn.
Similar to barrels, qvevri can be used for wine fermentation and aging, often both. Traditionally they taper to a point at the bottom, where the pomace will settle, preventing overextraction. Similar to Chinese teaware, the terroir of the clay has an effect on the wine, so the pedigree of a qvevri matters. And although traditional qvevri were made with clay taken from near the vineyard, there are very few traditional qvevri makers left — down to 5 at one point — so winemakers reviving this style are taking what they can get. Qvevri and Georgian winemaking were designated an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2013.
Qvevri aging is related to another traditional Georgian winemaking technique — long macerations. Allowing the skins, stems, and seeds of the grapes to remain in the vessel has a profound effect on the wine, imparting protective compounds that affect its aging, interacting with the microbiota of the wine, and, of course, altering its color, flavor, and nutritive content. Even red wine in Georgia is traditionally made with longer macerations than in the West, and it shows — as you will taste this month!
Producer Focus: Tchotiashvili
Tchotiashvili is the name of a family that traces its roots to the early 18th century in the Alazani Valley. A partnership between brothers Ucha and Kakha, they represent the sixth generation making wine at their site in Saniore, meaning they retained their family winemaking tradition through the Soviet era — no easy feat. Since 2002 they have focused on the reintroduction of indigenous Georgian grapes. They have also opened a wine bar, Satsnakheli, for the purpose of educating about Georgian wine and winemaking.
With 12 ha of vines in total, all vineyard cultivation is organic and without irrigation. Yields are controlled through early pruning, and — because the wines are made traditionally — harvest is based on ripeness of stems as well as fruit.
Mtsvane Rechuli
Mtsvane is a white Georgian grape in resurgence with excellent potential for amber winemaking. Tchotiashvili’s Mtsvane Rechuli is whole cluster fermented and macerated for 8 months, and bottled unfiltered. This wine strikes an excellent balance of styles, achieving floral aromatics, deep honeyed fruit, and a rich texture.
Saperavi Rechuli
Saperavi (coming from a word meaning “dye” or “pigment”) is one of the few grape varietals which produce anthocyanins in the inner flesh, and so is much richer in color and structure than most red wines. Tchotiashvili’s Saperavi Rechuli is also macerated for 3.5 months, yielding an exceptionally dark and tannic wine. However, maceration on skins brings an herbal balance to this wine and it doesn’t come off as too heavy.
If you are intrigued and would like a more in depth description of Georgian food and wine culture as well as the modern challenges facing them, I would recommend to Alice Feiring’s For the Love of Wine.
We look forward to seeing you at the bar! Check out our website for our new summer hours, which include tastings from 4–6 on Fridays!
Cheers,
Jason
