Midnight plane to Georgia
Georgia has been revealed as the birthplace of wine by an international team of scientists that found evidence of viticultural processes dating back to 6,000BC.
The news represents a major blow to any Iranians that proudly went around declaring their country to be the cradle of the wine world. The earliest signs of winemaking had been found near Tehran in 5,400BC, but now Georgia has pipped it by 600 years. The project was admittedly funded by the Georgian government, but can boast a roll call of respected scholars from the US, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy and Israel.
They found clear, tartaric acid-based evidence that Vitis vinifera was growing in the country in early Neolithic times and enjoying ideal conditions. For the less archaeologically inclined among our readers, think The Flintstones, Fred and Wilma huddled around a qvevri sipping glasses of Saperavi and waxing lyrical about the myriad marvels of Georgian terroir while Bam-Bam wreaks havoc in the background.
A slap-up breakfast of eggs, cottage cheese and two large glasses of cha-cha – a grappa that weighs in north of 40% abv – blows any cobwebs away and a tour of the winery is followed by a hearty lunch of superb Georgian haute cuisine, accompanied by several glasses of full-bodied, tannic, remarkably complex and interesting red wine. Then the death threats begin.
In its first year Schuchmann produced 300,000 bottles of wine and the annual output has since climbed to 1.5 million, almost all of which is exported. Some goes to Russia and former Soviet countries, but it is not overexposed to this region and several buyers in Asia, North America and western Europe take the wines, so the marketing drive has clearly paid off. Around 600,000 bottles come from estate-grown grapes, the rest is from grapes bought in from a steady base of local growers. “We have good relationships with them and we can be assured we are getting good quality fruit,” says Dakishvili.
“We do green harvesting and cut 20% to reduce quantity and increase the quality of the grapes. It is hand-harvested and we make 100% hand selection. We get good concentration of fruit flavours. For Saperavi, the main Georgian red variety, we can produce excellent wines with strong colour and flavour, with big potential, and this means it can compare well to the best French and Italian wines.” Gaumarjos to that.