When Vazha Nikolayevo leads you on a tour of his small, private vineyard in the heart of Georgian wine country, when he dips into his small, private cellar–literally dips a ladle into a ceramic barrel sunken in the earth–you want desperately to love the wine he offers up.
The setting intoxicates: Centuries-old stone houses open into courtyards thick with grape vines hanging so low that you duck as you negotiate the stone path and dodge the dog and the chickens and curious kids darting around your feet. The country air is crisp, the blue sky boundless. The Caucasus Mountains rise beyond the rooftops.
You want to love the wine because Nikolayevo–because Georgia–is poor and charming and so hospitable that you are embarrassed almost to the point of shame.
And yet, this wine.
“That is Georgian wine!” Nikolayevo fairly shouts as you sip from a jar a cool liquid the color of iced tea with a zest like slightly flat soda pop and a kick you will appreciate later.
“Now you tell me that wine from Europe is better. You cannot.”
You can, but you won’t. You will tell Nikolayevo only that European and Georgian wines are different. And you will join Nikolayevo, and you will drink.
A stubborn pride
Nikolayevo captures all that is sweet and all that is bitter about winemaking in this former Soviet republic. His pride in his work is admirable. So is his adherence to tradition in a land where, archeologists say, wine was being made as far back as 5000 B.C.
But Nikolayevo’s pride and adherence condemn him to producing a product that will never be anything more than a local favorite, something to be raised in toasts and thrown down gullets at wedding banquets or bartered for tools or labor or whatever else Nikolayevo might need around the house.
This would be fine if Nikolayevo were content with being the guy to whom his fellow villagers point when a stranger asks who makes the best wine in town.
But like Georgia, Nikolayevo wants more. Like Georgia, Nikolayevo wants his wine bottled and placed on tables from Moscow to London to Chicago. He wants foreign investors to give him money to turn his family operation into something big. Only he does not want to change his wine.
That is a Georgian winemaker!
Most Georgian winemakers agree that their concoctions differ, sometimes greatly, from the vast majority of wines served across Europe or the Americas. Georgian wines are sweeter, stronger and–how to put this?–harsher.
“No other wine can be compared to Georgian,” said Eduard Yeginov, a retired photojournalist for the old Soviet news agency TASS who now tends his small yard of vines in the village of Kardenahi. “I have tried both French and Spanish wines. They have a very tart taste, and they are so weak, as if they were mixed with water.”
Western wine enthusiasts in Georgia and the former Soviet Union find that the best Georgian wines, particularly from homemade stocks, are quite pleasant to drink. The bad ones are simply impossible.
Georgia’s grapey gamble
Buying a bottle of Georgian wine is a leap of faith. To most Westerners, the taste of some Georgian wines can seem as exotic as their names: Barakoni and Ojaleshi, Mukuzani and Tsinandali.
Counterfeiting drenches the former Soviet Union, so the Saperavi you buy in Moscow stands a good chance of being some back-yard brew smuggled in from Moldova. And given the lack of quality control at all but a few Georgian producers, even the real stuff can ruin your dinner if not your day.
Blame in part the shaky economy in this country of 5.5 million people. Blame as well a debilitating hangover from Soviet days.
The Soviets and their obsession with central planning threw out centuries of Georgian winemaking expertise by forcing all winemakers to join one big collective. Large factories in scattered locations were created for each step of winemaking: crushing, fermenting, aging and bottling. Family brands were thrown out and wines were sold merely by the type–Napareuli or Kindzmarauli, for example–with no other information.
Georgians still fermented their own at home, but craftsmanship and inventiveness and apprenticeship took a beating.
“We have a great tradition of winemaking, but by the last years of the Soviet Union all that mattered was mass production. Quality became very low,” said Zurab Goletiani of Georgian Wines and Spirits, a Western-financed joint venture that believes Georgia’s variety of soils, climates and grapes gives it vast potential.
“Our specialists do not know how backward we are,” Goletiani said.
For Georgian Wines and Spirits, which is growing by a third each year, the challenges are as varied as its product list.
In a country that produces nearly 40 varieties of wine, GWS itself produces more than 20. Most GWS wines are marketed under the brand Tamada, the Georgian word for the all-important toastmaster. Its dry red Saperavi, especially formulated to suit Western palates, and its naturally semi-sweet white Tvishi rival good Chilean wines. (Unfortunately, and inexplicably, they often cost as much or more at a typical Moscow shop.) Western wine lovers dismiss many other GWS wines as too odd or too inconsistent.
Counterfeit bottlings
Georgian Wines and Spirits blames counterfeiting for much of Georgia’s bad reputation among wine connoisseurs. It is frustrated by the Georgian government’s unwillingness or inability to better regulate the wine industry and protect the vineyards turning out the real deal.
Many large factories turn out practically no wine at all these days. Smaller ones somehow get by despite having no electricity. They use corroded tanks, jerry-rigged filters and bottles collected from the streets and washed out by hand.
Such operations cry out for investment and an infusion of new technology and new methods. Their wines cry out for help.
But many factory directors and mid-level winemakers still cling to the idea that their operations are worth great sums. They believe their modern Georgian wines still measure up to the beauty and power of the Georgian landscape, the delight and invention of Georgian cooking and the warmth and generosity of the Georgian people.
“We have all the equipment here to make wine that they would drink in the West,” said Alika Chahashvili, an engineer turned driver turned winemaker who three years ago realized what he says is the dream of every Georgian man in the Kakheti region: He bought his own winemaking plant.
Chahashvili’s plant turned out 100,000 bottles last year, some of which went to Moscow but most of which were sold for about 50 cents apiece to Georgian consumers. A tasting by a few Western and Russian travelers suggested that those consumers overpaid.
“If we had good conditions and possibilities here, we could make the best wine in the world,” Chahashvili said. “But if you change the taste, it would become French wine. It would not be Georgian.”
