Vachnadziani Winery Qvevri Rkatsiteli 2023
£17.95
The wine
A layered and complex wine, with green tea tones, dried orange peel and honeyed, toasty notes, leading to hints of beeswax on the palate. A powerful and focussed wine, with wonderful depth through to a long finish.
This is the original orange wine. A qvevri is a large egg-shaped clay vessel buried to the neck in the ground, and white grapes are fermented in it on their skins, stems and pips for months, which draws out the colour, tannin and grip. Georgians have made wine this way for 8,000 years, and UNESCO recognised the method as intangible cultural heritage in 2013.
The producer
Vachnadziani Winery
View all Vachnadziani Winery winesVachnadziani was established in 1953 and is among the oldest wineries in Georgia. The vineyards fell into disrepair through the later Soviet years and have since received considerable investment, with the stated aim of preserving an ancient wine culture while applying modern technology to it.
Georgia has a fair claim to being the cradle of wine. Grape seeds and residue found in clay vessels in the country date back some 8,000 years, making it the earliest known winemaking anywhere, and the tradition never stopped. The qvevri, a large egg-shaped clay vessel buried to the neck in the ground, is still in use, and UNESCO recognised the method as intangible cultural heritage in 2013.
The winery farms over 1,000 hectares across Kakheti in the east, where most Georgian wine is made, and Imereti, Racha and Lechkhumi in the west. The grapes are almost entirely native: Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane for whites, Krakhuna from Imereti, and Saperavi, one of the very few red varieties in the world with red flesh as well as red skin.
