Wine region: Georgia

Georgia is one of the birthplaces of wine culture and wild vines – Vitis Vinifera Silvestris are still widely distributed across the country. Archaeologists and historians have discovered evidence and material artefacts including seven thousand year old grape seeds and antique vessels (pruning knives, stone presses etc.) as well as written testimony of foreign chroniclers and travellers. According to a poem by Apollonius Rhodius, the Argonauts, having arrived at the capital Colchis, saw twining vines at the entrance to the king’s palace and a fountain of wine in the shade of the trees. That Homer, Strabon and Procopius of Caesaria used to mention it in their works leads wine historians to surmise that it was the Transcaucasus, especially Georgia, which was the native land of the first known cultured grape varieties and that it was also from here that the vine spread to many European countries. Xenophon in the 5th century recalled it thus: “That Caucasian tribe who lived in the Black sea coast (and who) prepared strong wine.”

Wine’s name itself is of Georgian origin “Gvino” and October, harvest month, is named “Gvinobistve” (the month of wine). Mosaics attest to the influence of the Georgian wine god “Aguna”. The cult of grapevine and wine forms part of the Georgian psyche – present from spiritual and religious symbolism to the more earthbound aspects of life. In the first part of the IV century St. Nino arrived in Georgia bringing the word of Christianity with an upheld cross made in the shape of an intertwined grapevine arbour. Georgians venerate the vine and its product, and wherever wine is served, a toast is voiced and big-hearted, misty-eyed oratory issues forth.
Wine as evidenced from the Georgian folklore and history is used for solemn or mournful ritual, in copious quantities and rarely, if ever, diluted. The French traveller, Chardin, wrote in the 17th century, that there was “no other country in the world in which wine was so good and drunk so amply, as in Georgia.”

There was a moment of hush as Stalin’s barber cleared away the topsoil and scraped off the clay. He paused like a priest about to confer the sacraments. Only the lid remained. He stood and, so as to underline the drama of the occasion, trod deliberately around its circumference. I edged closer and willed him to take the final step.

As the lid came away, a raspberry haze rose from the ground and was swept away on the breeze. A crimson mirror reflected the scudding clouds - 400 litres of fresh young wine.

The barber took his ladle and scooped out the first glass and handed it to me. I raised it to my mouth and drank. It was a moment of magical intensity.  “It’s saperavi,” he said, referring to the grape, which in Georgian means pigment. It was densely red and cool and stained my lips like blood.

Georgia and its vineyards had taken over a corner of my mind.

Rob Parsons – BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent