Wine History of Kakheti

Key eras

Qvevri before the barrel

The Georgian National Tourism Administration puts the country's winemaking tradition at 8,000 years and points to grape remains found at Gadachrili Gora in Marneuli, outside Kakheti, dated to around 6000 BC. The vessel that carries the tradition forward is the qvevri, an egg-shaped clay jar buried to the neck in the cellar floor.

The Nekresi winepresses

Excavations at Nekresi, between Kvareli and the village of Shilda, uncovered a stone building of 20 by 20 metres holding five winepresses and two cisterns, dated to the 4th to 5th century and standing on the hillock of Samarkhebis Seri. Digging at the site began in 1984.

The monastery cellar at Alaverdi

Alaverdi was settled by the Assyrian monk Joseph Alaverdeli, who came from Antioch. The present Cathedral of Saint George was raised in the 11th century by Kvirike III of Kakheti, and the monks' own cellar is dated to between the 10th and 12th centuries.

Gremi, the royal capital

King Levan of Kakheti made Gremi his seat and the Church of the Archangels went up between 1565 and 1577. The surviving complex holds a three-storey castle, a bell tower, defensive walls and a wine cellar. Shah Abbas I destroyed the town in 1615.

Telavi takes over

After Gremi fell the Georgian kings moved their capital west along the Alazani. Telavi became the political and urban centre of Kakheti during the 17th century, under the reign of Archil II from 1664 to 1675, and it has been the region's base for wine travel ever since.

Sighnaghi's fortress town

King Heraclius II founded Sighnaghi in 1762 and walled it against raids from Dagestan. A census in 1770 recorded 100 families of craftsmen and merchants inside the walls. The town received official town status when Imperial Russia annexed Georgia in 1801.

Annexation

Kakheti held its own crown from the 1460s, through the reigns of Alexander I, Levan and Alexander II, until the Russian Empire annexed the kingdom in 1801. The administrative map that followed is roughly the one the region still uses, eight municipalities around Telavi.

Chavchavadze builds at Tsinandali

Alexander Chavchavadze, who lived from 1786 to 1846, inherited Tsinandali from his father Garsevan, put up an Italianate palace and laid out a decorative garden. The estate's wine cellar and factory were built in the 1830s, setting European cellar practice alongside Georgian tradition.

The Tsinandali oenotheque

The Tsinandali oenotheque holds more than 16,500 bottles dating from 1814 onwards, among them a Saperavi of 1841. The estate itself became a museum in 1947.

Alaverdoba's autumn fair

Alaverdoba is a religious and folk celebration with roots in a harvest festival. An agricultural fair was folded into it during the 19th century. The gathering survived the Soviet period and still draws neighbouring communities, including Kist families from the Pankisi Gorge.

Soviet volume

Georgian vineyard area went from 143,000 acres in 1950 to 316,000 acres by 1985, with production reaching 881,000 tons in 1985. Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign then took many of those vines out, a reversal Kakheti spent the following decades undoing.

The Kvareli tunnel

The tunnel cellar at Kvareli, 7.7 km of two main and 13 connecting galleries cut into the Caucasus rock, opened in 1962 for the World Congress of Vine and Wine. It sits at 12 to 16 degrees all year and now holds the bottle library where tastings take place.

The appellations registered

The National Wine Agency's register of protected designations of origin carries registration dates of 30 August 2005, 21 August 2006 and 10 December 2007. Gurjaani, Vazisubani, Teliani, Kardenakhi, Kakheti, Manavi, Mukuzani, Napareuli and Akhasheni are all on it.

The 2006 embargo

Russia banned Georgian wine in 2006, citing counterfeit bottlings, and the trade had to rebuild elsewhere. By 2019 Georgia was shipping 94 million bottles of 0.75 litres to 53 countries, with China and the United States among the new markets.

The Alaverdi cellar restored

The monastery marani at Alaverdi was brought back into use in 2006 in partnership with the Akhmeta producer Badagoni. The monks work the qvevri cellar again and bottle under the Since 1011 label, taking the year from the cathedral's foundation.

UNESCO lists the qvevri method

UNESCO inscribed the ancient Georgian traditional qvevri wine-making method on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. The citation describes pressing the grapes, pouring juice, skins, stalks and pips into the qvevri, then sealing and burying it to ferment for five to six months.

Influences

• The Georgian Orthodox Church: Monastic cellars kept the method through centuries of raiding. Alaverdi's marani is dated to the 10th to 12th century and the archaeological winery at Nekresi is older still.
• The Chavchavadze family: Alexander Chavchavadze built the Tsinandali cellar and factory in the 1830s and started the bottle library that now runs from 1814, putting European cellar practice beside the qvevri.
• Soviet state planning: Vineyard area more than doubled between 1950 and 1985 and the appellation names, Tsinandali, Mukuzani, Kindzmarauli, became national brands bottled at volume.
• UNESCO: The 2013 inscription of the qvevri method gave the buried-jar cellars a standing they had not had commercially, and estates that had kept steel-only ranges added qvevri bottlings.
• The National Wine Agency: The agency keeps the register of protected designations of origin and publishes the harvest reports, so the boundaries of Mukuzani, Napareuli, Akhasheni and the rest are a matter of record rather than custom.

Signature innovations

• The Kakhetian method: the whole of the chacha, skins, stalks and pips, ferments with the juice in the qvevri. The National Wine Agency contrasts this with the Imeretian practice of adding at most a third.
• Burying the qvevri to the neck, so the ground holds the vessel at the 13 to 15 degrees the ferment wants without any cooling equipment.
• Leaving white grapes on the chacha until spring, which is where Kakhetian amber colour, tannin and oxidative flavour come from.
• Five stone winepresses under one 20 by 20 metre roof at Nekresi, dated to the 4th to 5th century.
• Cellar ageing and bottling at Tsinandali from the 1830s, with a library that still runs back to 1814.
• A 7.7 km tunnel cellar cut into the rock at Kvareli, opened in 1962 and holding 12 to 16 degrees all year.