Is Georgia the real wine nation? “Georgians call their country “Sakartvelo”, which means “the land of grape harvests””, responds Natia Jokhadze, who works for the wine and spirits group Marussia Beverages, in Tbilisi, the country’s capital. “Here everyone makes a little wine with the pieces of grapevines from their garden.” continues the thirty-year-old, started by her family.
Precisely for this reason, in this country where family and commercial production mixes, official figures for Georgian viticulture are difficult to establish. “The border between professional and national production is very permeable in Georgia. The wine that neighbors consume is often made by themselves, a family member, a friend, a neighbor… and it is drunk in the year it was made,” confirms Christophe Lavelle, CNRS researcher and author ofDiscovering Georgian wines (Apogee, 2023). However, the area of Georgian vineyards is estimated at about 55,000 hectares for a production of 1.9 million hectoliters, of which more than half is consumed locally.
In this small country trapped between Europe and Asia, which has only four million inhabitants, wine has always been part of the culture. The vine is everywhere; It even spreads throughout the city, on the facades of Tbilisi houses. Georgia disputes with Armenia the first domestication of the vine, eleven thousand years ago. But if it is well established that wine appeared in the Caucasus, it is less important who started it than how it survived. And, in this matter, Georgia is actually the nation with the longest history. That is, eight thousand years of wine production, as attested by the most recent archaeological discoveries.
Millennial know-how
Thanks to this rich past, the country today proudly displays the largest number of grape varieties in the world: more than five hundred different ones currently cultivated. It is also at the origin of an original winemaking method, dating back to the dawn of time, made in kvevri or qvevri, and since 2013 listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Ovoid in shape, these containers are large terracotta jars buried in the ground. Once the grapes are poured into this container, they are sealed for several months to allow them to ferment naturally. A know-how inherited from the family and recently professionalized that has benefited from popularity around the world for ten years, especially in France and Italy, thanks to the famous orange wines.
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