It's no secret that the Transcaucasian country of Georgia has received unprecedented international recognition in recent years for its natural and orange wines, which are fermented and aged in the large, egg-shaped terra cotta vessels known as qvevri, which are buried in the ground.
As these wines have been making their way into restaurants and wine shops around the world, winemakers in other countries have got in on the act. So impressed are they with the minimal-intervention qvevri method – which, according to archeological evidence, has been in existence in Georgia since the 6th millennium BC – that producers from Italy to the US now make their own versions.
Today, the focus of this winemaking method is rooted in the epicenter of Georgia’s wine sector: Khakheti, the country’s premier wine region.
Ancient winemaking
Khakheti has 33,000 of the approximately 45,000 ha planted to vine in the country, and is home to 14 of Georgia’s 18 protected designations of origin (PDOs). Moreover, dozens of the 400 grape varieties native to Georgia – there were once 525 – are grown in Khakheti’s vineyards, including white Rkatsiteli, Mtsvane, Kisi, Khikhvi, and the red showcase grape, Saperavi.
Nature has been generous. With the majestic South Caucasus mountains as its backdrop, Khakheti comprises the eastern portion of Georgia and is surrounded by Azerbaijan and Russia; the rest of Georgia also shares borders with Armenia, Turkey and the Black Sea. This sun-filled position offers a conglomeration of soils and micro-climates, especially along the banks of the Alazani and Iori rivers, where sprawling vineyards can rise up to 700 metres above sea level on terroir of alluvial, clay and loam soils with occasional inclusions of limestone, schist and slate.
During Georgia’s 70-year period as a republic of the Soviet Union, the big state factories used Georgian grapes to mass produce wine via European tank vinification methods in order to supply the vast USSR market. At one point, Georgia had well over 150,000 ha of vineyards. But Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign in the 1980s eventually saw nearly 100,000 of them grubbed up or left fallow.
Nevertheless, following the break-up of the Soviet Union and Georgia’s independence in 1991, Khakheti remained the Georgian engine for supplying large volumes of commercial wine to Russia. It was the number one export market until 2006, when Russia slapped a seven-year-long embargo on Georgian wine in an act widely seen as political, to punish Georgia for the disputes over the South Ossetia and Abkhazia territories, and for Georgia’s growing ties with the West.
This jolted Georgia into looking not only beyond Russia for new wine export markets, but also at its own history, to determine what it could offer that was unique.
One great asset is Alaverdi, a 1,000-year-old Georgian Eastern Orthodox monastery. Wines have been made here in qvevri almost without interruption since the monastery’s founding in 1011 AD, except for some decades during the Soviet era, when the anti-religious communists used the complex for automobile storage, filling its great qvevris with fuel. In 2006, the monastery began to revive its winemaking traditions, now carried out by 39-year-old Father Gerasim, who makes what could be the most shining prototypes of naturally fermented wines.
For example, his Rkatsiteli 2013 and Khikhvi 2011 were made with bunches of lightly crushed grapes placed, along with their stalks and pips, inside the qvevri that are buried in the ground (in the monastery's marani, or cellar) up to their open tops.
The tops were then sealed and covered in soil in order for the wine to spend the following six to seven months fermenting and ageing. Only natural yeasts were at work; no additives were used whatsoever. The following spring, the vessels were opened and the juice was racked to other qvevris for settling and stabilisation. “The way of winemaking is as natural as possible,” says Father Gerasim. “The wine is completely unfiltered. Only right before bottling is just a touch of sulphur added. And that’s it.”
The result is fabulously structured wines with flavours of dried apricot, orange rind and bay leaf, plus fresh acidity and a firm tannic grip. And notably, the wines have the trademark orange-ish hue from which the orange wine movement in Great Britain and other countries takes its name. But Father Gerasim, along with most winemakers in Khakheti, does not appreciate the term.
“We call it ‘dry golden wine’ on our bottle label,” says Father Gerasim. “The wine is more golden or amber in colour. It is not ‘orange wine’.”
Alaverdi’s export markets include the UK, US, Italy, Japan and, soon, China. There are also several other small-volume wineries throughout Khakheti producing high-quality variations of qvevri wines and capturing foreign markets with them.
Giorgi ‘Gogi’ Dakishvili, for example, produces 15,000 bottles of Rkatsiteli, Kisi and Saperavi wines from 4 ha of vineyards at his eight-year-old winery in the Telavi district. These qvevri wines, sold under the Vita Vinea label in the UK, Italy, France and Poland, include a stunning Kisi 2014, exuding notes of dried yellow stone fruits, and herbs and spices. The price tag at the Dakishvili cellar door is 20 GEL ($8.50) per bottle.
Kakha Tchotiashvili uses 22 qvevri for the 25,000 bottles he produces from 4.5 ha at his winery, founded in 2013. Some of the wines, including Rkatsiteli, Kisi, Goruli Mtsvane and Saperavi, undergo settling in steel tanks or oak barrels before bottling and are sent to natural wine importers in Japan and Germany. And the Shalauri Cellars, also set up in 2013, includes amongst its 20,000-bottle annual production a Saperavi 2013 made from grapes grown in the Tsinandali PDO, which retails in Washington DC wine shops for $28.00.
Some of Khakheti’s small-winery owners are considered winemaking gurus and often farm out their knowledge to other budding or newly established wineries. Gogi Dakishvili, for example, has been the main winemaker for Schuchmann Wines in Kisiskhevi in Telavi since it opened in 2006 – and now owns a 10% share in the company. But he also lends his expertise to, amongst others, the Shalauri Cellars and, in the village of Gremi, the fascinating Temi Winery, which produces qvevri wines as part of the Temi Community, a state-supported organisation providing services to people with physical or learning disabilities.
Other wine styles
Still, qvevri wines from Khakheti represent less than 2% of Georgia’s total wine production. Nevertheless, the gathering fame of the wines helped big producers of European-style tank and barrel wines find new markets during the Russian embargo period. In 2008, well into the embargo, Georgia produced 26m L of wine, of which Khakheti represented around 90%. By 2013, the year Russia lifted the embargo, it was 70m L. By the following year, production had risen to 82m L – with Russia once again at the top of Georgia’s export markets. But other markets gained as well, including Sweden and South Africa.
However, the devaluation of the Russian ruble in 2014, spurred by the drop in oil prices and international economic sanctions imposed on Russia, caused Georgian wine exports to Russia to plummet once again. In 2014, 37.6m 750 ml bottles of Georgian wine were sent to Russia; in 2015, that figure dropped to 18.3m bottles. But at least there was some compensation: market growth was seen in China (122%), the US (31%), Canada (48%) and the Baltic countries (57%).
Hoping to see further growth in export figures today are the heads of several large-scale wineries who’ve invested in Khakheti. These include the new €4.5m Shilda winery, which specialises in stainless steel fermented wines, such as a Saperavi with an ex-cellar price of $2.70 per bottle, and a Tsinandali at between $2.00 and $2.50 ex-cellar. As Vasil Managadze, Shilda’s CEO, puts it: “We are industrial producers – we say this loud and clear. We want to have entry-level to high-quality wines with reasonable, realistic prices.”
There’s also Schuchmann, whose German owner, Burkhard Schuchmann, has pumped €12m ($13.6m) into the winery-hotel-restaurant since he founded it in 2006; the €3m Maranuli winery, founded in 2012, with 90% of its wines (10% produced in qvevri) exported; and the Manaveli winery, formed in 2013, which produces beautiful Rkatsiteli wines vinified in steel, oak or qvevri.
Although the ancient Georgian qvevri winemaking method gained UNESCO listing in 2013, there are only a few qvevri artisans left in the country, mainly in Khakheti and in the Imereti region of western Georgia. But orders are coming in from around the world and waiting periods are growing. According to Zaza Kbilashvili, a fourth-generation qvevri maker in the village of Vardisubani in Khakheti, production of one 2,000-L qvevri can take several months. “It needs three months to build, 10 cm at a time, and then three weeks to dry,” he says. “Then comes the firing. All in all, I make just 24 qvevri per year, and this is only between early spring and late fall. The cold winter months aren't good for production.” The prices for a qvevri vary, but a rough average is between one and two GEL ($0.42 to $0.85) per litre.
The Georgian government also contributes through a range of initiatives and funding, many of which are executed through the National Wine Agency, part of the Ministry of Agriculture of Georgia. In addition to benefiting from extensive marketing and promotions, Khakheti will see a survey of its vineyards completed within the next two to three years, and an expansion of the Khakheti Wine Route. For new businesses, the state offers funding of 99% of the interest on start-up loans from banks. And, as a left-over from the period of economic hardship caused by the Russian embargo, grape growers in Khakheti are entitled to subsidies on grapes they sell to wineries: 0.35 GEL per kilo of Rkatsiteli grapes, and 0.15 GEL per kilo of Saperavi grapes. Given that the embargo is long over and that wine sales are now more stable, the continuation of the subsidies is currently in question.
Khakheti also has seen a number of high- quality and luxury hotels and restaurants pop up to accommodate growing tourism in the region. Chateau Mere in Telavi and Hotel Royal Batoni in Kvareli are owned by Gia Piradashvili, who also happens to produce wines under the Winiveria label.
If there is any question about whether Khakheti is a distinguished wine region in which distinctive wines are made, it’s reassuring to see that a Saperavi 2011 from the organic winery Lagvinari, owned by Eko Glonti, can be sipped at the Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck and at London’s Ritz Hotel.
