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THE HARVEST

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Georgia claims to be the birthplace of wine culture and wild vines.

Archaeologists and historians have discovered evidence and material artefacts including eight thousand year old grape seeds and antique vessels (pruning knives, stone presses etc.) as well as written testimony of foreign chroniclers and travelers.

According to a poem by Apollonius Rhodius, the Argonauts, having arrived at the capital Colchis, saw twining vines at the entrance to the king’s palace and a fountain of wine in the shade of the trees. Homer, Strabon and Procopius of Caesaria used to mention it in their works. That it was the Transcaucasus, especially Georgia, which was the native land of the first known cultured grape varieties and that it was also from here that the vine spread to many European countries.

Wine’s name itself is of Georgian origin “Gvino” and October, harvest month, is named “Gvinobistve” (the month of wine)

The cult of grapevine and wine forms part of the Georgian psyche – present from spiritual and religious symbolism to the more earthbound aspects of life. 

 The methods of Georgian winemaking have remained the same for thousands of years. Clay vessels, lined with beeswax, made by master craftsmen, are buried in the cellar or in the earth, where the fermentation takes place, extracting colour and tannin from the grape skins.

It is important to understand that the Georgians are fiercely proud of the qvevri, for not only is it associated with the ancestral vessels in which the very first wines were made, it also has a powerful symbolic resonance. Buried in mother earth and made out of clay, it is of the earth itself.

Also there is a pleasing circularity in the making and drinking wine – the vines with their roots plunged in the clay, the qvevri forged out of the clay, the clay drinking vessels…

This is also a wine culture that has effectively developed in isolation from the commercial intensive-farming techniques of the rest of the Europe. Of course, there is industrial winemaking in Georgia, but the wine that people make for their own consumption is naturally free of additives and chemical manipulations. In this sense the qvevri is more than just a vessel to ferment wine; it is the continuation of a natural tradition.

Georgian natural wines invariably possess a raw energy that is beguiling. Many of the so-called whites are amber or orange, as the wines are fermented on their skins (and stalks) giving them a textural (occasionally abrasive) character.

When you taste, for example, the various offerings from Alaverdi Monastery, Ramoz Nikoladze, Iago Berishvili, Pheasant’s Tears, Niki Antadze or Telavi you cannot but feel that these wines deserve their place on the global stage. Tasting them recalibrates the palate; they are joltingly pure, a unique asset in a world where uniformity is the norm and easy consistency is prized.

Georgia’s naturally-made wines are from a culture that is as old as the world of wine; they constitute a form of living history, showcasing a vibrant, authentic, self-sufficient, and dare one say, spiritual wine culture that has begun to thrive in an era of homogeneity, commercialism and narrow critical focus.

This culture reminds us that wine is a means to end, as the quench to thirst, as the catalyst for pleasure, a means to celebrate certain events and to honor friendships and other important relationships. And that surely is a salutary and timeless message.

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