Best Georgian Wines to Buy

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Wild grapes, as well as the vitis vinifera family of cultivated vines – from which almost all of the world’s wine is now made – almost certainly originated here, then spread due to its key position on ancient trading routes from the east.

But for most of the 20th century Georgia was forced to make cheap wine for its Soviet overlords, when state-run wineries ripped up indigenous grapes to replace them with high-yielding international varieties. But most families continued to make wine for their own consumption from their own old vines.

Following independence in 1991, vineyards were returned to their rightful owners and wineries were sold to forward-thinking business owners who introduced better viticulture and wine-making techniques. There was widespread replanting of native grapes so producers could make high-quality, modern wines that appealed to their many growing export markets. These now account for the vast majority of production but there’s also an enthusiastic revival of ancient wine-making methods.

Thousands of years before hipsters got a whiff of orange wine, Georgians were fermenting grapes along with their skins, stems and pips in qvevri – teardrop-shaped clay vessels as tall as a man, lined with beeswax and buried in the ground up to their necks. This method maintains a steady temperature as the wines age, extracting colour, flavour and tannins for extra complexity and an appetising, grippy texture.

When made with white grapes, these are the original orange wines. The most extreme can be challenging – detractors say they taste like rough farmyard cider – but there are plenty of appealing, drinkable wines made in the same style. They’re to be savoured slowly and are usually best served with food, especially Middle Eastern dishes.