Georgian wine: qvevri, saperavi and what to drink

Ordering wine here goes wrong in one specific way. The list hands you a column of grapes nobody has taught you to read, a colour that is neither white nor red, and a category called semi-sweet that a Western drinker treats as a warning label. All three of those are the good part.

The finder above is for that moment: filter the classic grapes and appellations by colour, by sweetness, and by whether they are made in a qvevri or in steel — or just type in the name sitting on the list in front of you. This page is the reasoning behind it — what a qvevri actually does, which region makes what, and which famous name is priced for its story rather than its contents.

What a qvevri is, and what it does to a white wine

A qvevri is a clay vessel shaped like an egg, lined inside with beeswax and buried up to its neck in the floor of a cellar. The earth around it holds a steady temperature through fermentation, and the shape settles the solids into the point at the bottom.

The interesting part is what goes into it. White grapes are usually put in whole — skins, pips, often the stems — and left for months rather than pressed off straight away.

Skin contact on a white grape does to it roughly what it does to a red one. It pulls out colour, so the wine turns gold, then bronze, then amber. It pulls out tannin, so the wine grips rather than merely refreshes. And it pulls out a set of flavours that white winemaking normally exists to avoid: dried apricot, walnut skin, black tea, orange peel.

The practical consequence is that an amber wine behaves like a light red. Serve it cool, not cold. It will stand up to grilled meat, aged cheese and anything with walnut in it, which is most of the cold table. Ask for a glass before you commit to a bottle — the category divides people, and the tannin is what does it.

Internationally the same thing is sold as orange wine. Producers here say amber, and the difference matters to them: this is not a natural-wine revival, it is the way white wine was made before there was another way, and it never entirely stopped. How old that practice is gets argued over, and the archaeological claims get revised and rounded off in marketing copy, so treat any precise age you see on a back label as advertising rather than a fact.

Not everything is made this way. Plenty of the country's white wine is fermented in steel, in the European style, and some cellars make both from the same vineyard. If the wine you want is qvevri-made, the label or the waiter will say so, because it is the thing anyone making it wants you to know.

The regions, and what each one does

If you only take one thing from that table: east and west make opposite wines. Kakheti gives you power, tannin and long maceration. Imereti gives you a lighter touch on the same equipment. A restaurant list that only offers Kakheti is a list that has not been thought about.

The grapes worth knowing by name

Saperavi is the red that matters. It is a teinturier — the flesh is dark as well as the skin — so it is inky even when it is young, and it carries dark fruit, firm acid and a sour-plum edge. It ages, it takes oak if a producer wants it to, and it is the safe order when the list defeats you. Ordered by its zone it becomes Mukuzani — dry Saperavi oak-aged before release, and the reference point for what the grape does with no sugar left in it.

Rkatsiteli is the workhorse white, and in a qvevri it is the definitive amber wine: apricot, tea, and a tannic grip that surprises everyone the first time. Blended with Kakhuri Mtsvane and made the European way instead, the same two grapes become Tsinandali, the dry white that anchors the steel-and-oak half of a Kakhetian list.

Kisi is the one to look for once Rkatsiteli has stopped surprising you — rarer, more perfumed, and the amber that converts sceptics.

Mtsvane is the trap on the list, because it is two different grapes printed as one word — mtsvane just means green. Kakhuri Mtsvane is the eastern one: perfumed and round, the aromatic partner to Rkatsiteli and the second half of most amber blends. Goruli Mtsvane is a Kartli grape and tastes nothing like it — herbal and peppery rather than floral, usually blended with Chinuri. If the label says only Mtsvane, the region tells you which one you are drinking. Khikhvi is scarcer and richer, honeyed when it goes into a qvevri.

In the west, Tsolikouri and Tsitska are the fresh whites and Krakhuna the fuller, waxier one.

The western reds are not one thing either. Otskhanuri Sapere is the properly Imeretian one: deeply coloured, tart and grippy, and the red out here that repays keeping. Aladasturi arrives from the other direction, a Guria grape that spread into lower Imereti — picked late, well coloured but light on its feet, and carrying the brisk acidity the coast gives everything. Left on the vine longer still, the over-ripe fruit is made into a naturally semi-sweet wine under that same name, which is the Ojaleshi trap again: read the label, not the grape. Kartli splits its reds the same way, with Tavkveri so pale and soft it is frequently bottled as a rosé outright, and Shavkapito darker and more structured behind it.

Chinuri and Tsitska are the base grapes behind most of the country's sparkling wine, which is the other thing their bracing acidity is good for.

One name on a Kakhetian list is not a grape at all and hides the thing you most need to know: Napareuli is an appellation bottled in both colours — a dry Saperavi red, and a dry Rkatsiteli white under the same word. The name will not tell you which arrives, so check the label or ask.

Then the rarities: Ojaleshi from Samegrelo, Chkhaveri from Guria, Usakhelouri from Lechkhumi, whose name translates roughly as "the nameless one". Small plantings, small production, and the bottles worth the space in your luggage.

There are hundreds of native varieties in the collections, most of them commercially extinct, and the count you see quoted varies with who is counting and what they count as a distinct variety. What matters at a table is that a dozen of them are on lists in Tbilisi and none of them is Cabernet — the one Cabernet you will meet wears a Georgian name, Teliani, after the zone around Telavi where it has been planted long enough to count as local.

Semi-sweet is a style here, not a training wheel

This is the thing a Western reader misreads on sight. Khvanchkara and Kindzmarauli are the most famous wines the country makes, and both are semi-sweet, and that is not an accident of bad taste.

The style comes from geography. In the cold cellars of the western highlands, fermentation used to stop on its own before the sugar was finished, and the wine that resulted kept a little sweetness alongside proper acid and tannin. Nobody added anything. That naturally arrested style is what the famous names are supposed to be.

What is on a shelf today ranges from exactly that to an industrial wine sweetened to a target, and the label will not tell you which. Sweetness on a Georgian label is a style declaration, not a quality grade.

Worth knowing which is which:

• Khvanchkara — red, from Racha, made from Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli. The prestige name.
• Kindzmarauli — red, from Kakheti, made from Saperavi grown around Kvareli. Darker and firmer than Khvanchkara.
• Akhasheni — red, Kakhetian, the softer cousin of Kindzmarauli.
• Tvishi — white, from Lechkhumi, made from Tsolikouri. The one to try if you think you dislike sweet wine.

Those names are appellations, protected under Georgian law. How far that protection reaches in any particular export market is a moving target and gets disputed, so outside the country treat the name as a description of a style rather than a guarantee of where the grapes grew.

The famous bottle that is not worth the money

Khvanchkara, bought casually. It is the most storied name in the country — helped along by its association with Stalin, which is exactly the kind of story that gets priced in — and the vineyard area behind it in Racha is genuinely small. The trade has complained for years that far more wine wears the name than that area could plausibly fill, and you cannot audit a label from a supermarket shelf.

So the supermarket, duty-free and hotel-minibar versions are the ones to skip. If you want the real thing, buy it from a wine shop that can tell you the producer, or from a cellar in Racha itself. If you simply want a good sweeter red, an Akhasheni or a small-producer Ojaleshi will give you more wine for the same money.

Two smaller traps. Roadside plastic bottles of homemade wine are a lottery — the same wine poured for you in a family cellar can be excellent, but a used bottle standing in the sun on a mountain pass is not the same proposition. And the house wine in a jug at a tourist restaurant is either the best value on the menu or oxidised; ask for a taste first, which nobody will find rude.

How to buy, and where

A marani is a cellar, and the word covers everything from a family's buried qvevris to a commercial winery with a tasting room. Kakheti is where most of them are, and a day out of Tbilisi through Telavi, Sighnaghi or Kvareli will get you into several. Tasting is usually informal, generous and accompanied by food.

In Tbilisi, buy from a specialist wine shop rather than a supermarket. The staff taste what they sell, the small producers are only distributed that way, and the price gap is smaller than you expect.

What a good bottle looks like on the shelf:

• A named producer, not just an appellation in large type.
• A stated vintage. Its absence usually means blended stock.
• Qvevri stated on the label if you want the traditional method — producers who do it say so.
• A village or vineyard, not only a region.
• The sweetness word you actually want: mshrali for dry, nakhevrad tkbili for semi-sweet.

Airport prices are worse and the selection is aimed at people who did not plan. Buy in town, pack carefully, and check your airline's baggage rules before you buy the case you will inevitably want.

Why the drinking works the way it does

Wine here is a table drink, not a tasting exercise. It arrives in a jug or an open bottle, glasses are refilled by whoever is nearest, and at a supra — the feast, with a tamada running it — you drink on the toast rather than between toasts. The food page explains how that sequence works; what it means for the wine is simpler.

You will drink more than you planned, in larger mouthfuls, at a pace someone else sets. That is why the everyday wines are moderate rather than heavy, and why nobody swirls, sniffs or scores anything. It is also why chacha, the grape spirit distilled from what is left after pressing, shows up late in the evening and should be treated with respect.

If you are the guest, you will be toasted, and you will be expected to reply. Standing up and saying something sincere about the house you are drinking in is the whole skill.

Before you come

Wine tourism is the easiest thing to organise here and the cheapest good wine you will drink anywhere — see the food page for what to put on the table beside it.

One piece of admin first: every tourist now has to hold health and accident insurance to enter, and it can be checked at the border. The travel insurance requirement page has the exact rule and a checker for the policy you already have.

And if a week in Kakheti turns into a plan — it happens more often than you would think — the relocation guide covers what staying actually involves.