Kakheti Qvevri Winemaking

In 2017, Patrick McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania found tartaric acid residue in pottery from Gadachrili Gora dated 6000–5800 BC — pushing wine's origin back some 500 to 1,000 years in a PNAS-published paper. Georgia is home to over 500 indigenous varieties, and Soviet collective farming mandates pushed most of the country's vineyards onto a handful of them. Pheasant's Tears in Sighnaghi — founded by American painter John Wurdeman, who first came to Georgia in 1995 — grows many of them side by side in its Poliphonia field. Saperavi is one of the only teinturier grapes used in single-varietal winemaking: both skin AND flesh are red. Inside, a qvevri is lined with beeswax, which soaks into its clay walls.

What to do there

6 things to do

1. 1 Touch the Vessel That Holds 8,000 Years History · Free

   Sighnaghi's city walls give you the first orientation: the oldest known wine was made about 95km from here.

   Where: Walk to the one section of Sighnaghi's 4.5km city walls you can actually walk along, with open towers, running perpendicular to the snow-capped mountain range. The 23 towers are visible from the town centre. Entry is free.

   What: Look out over the Alazani Valley. About 95km west-south-west of where you're standing, in Kvemo Kartli, archaeologists dug up clay pottery shards at two Neolithic sites — Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora — and found tartaric acid residue inside them. Carbon-dated to 6000–5800 BC. The world's oldest wine. University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Patrick McGovern confirmed it in 2017 in PNAS. What you're looking at is not the exact landscape — the Neolithic sites lie some 50km south of Tbilisi — but it is the same country where people made wine 500 to 1,000 years before anyone else on record.

   How: Come at golden hour. The Alazani Valley lights up amber against the Caucasus range. The color is not accidental — the same grapes that ferment into amber wine here have been growing in this light for centuries. Let the scale hit you before you rush to the wineries.

   Backup: If the walls are closed or being restored, the viewpoint behind the Bodbe Monastery (2km from Sighnaghi, free entry) gives an equivalent panorama of the valley with the added drama of being where St. Nino, the 4th-century apostle of Georgia, was buried.

   Log Memory
2. 2 Watch a Master Build Tomorrow's Wine Vessel by Hand History · Price: low

   Remi Kbilashvili has made qvevri for 40+ years — learned from his father, taught his son Zaza. This workshop 3km from Telavi is where the vessels that will hold the next harvest are being built right now.

   Where: Kbilashvili Winery and Qvevri Workshop, village of Vardisubani, ~3km from Telavi town center. Pre-booking is mandatory — no walk-ins. Book via advantour.com or contact through local tour operators. Confirm the price when you book.

   What: You will watch Remi or Zaza Kbilashvili build a qvevri using a method unchanged since the Neolithic. They start with two types of local red clay blended with water. Then they roll long ropes of clay and stack them as coils, building the vessel 15–20cm at a time — then stop and wait 24 hours for each layer to harden before adding the next. A single 2,000-litre qvevri takes three months to build. At Sergo Bozhadze's workshop in Shrosha, Imereti, a firing lasts five to six days at 900°C and burns through two truckloads of logs; ask the Kbilashvilis how their own kiln compares. While the vessel is still warm from the kiln, melted beeswax is applied inside with a cloth fixed to the end of a long stick, from the bottom up — the beeswax clogs the clay pores just enough to be hygienic without sealing them completely. The vessel is encased in lime on the outside, and after each emptying it is washed, sterilised with lime and re-coated with beeswax.

   How: Ask Remi how many qvevri he makes per year. The answer — around 50 a year, about eight at a time because that is what the kiln holds — makes the vessel you might drink from somewhere in Kakheti feel completely different. Ask to touch the unfinished clay. The weight and warmth of it is the point.

   Backup: If the Kbilashvili workshop is fully booked, the Twins Wine House in Napareuli (25km from Telavi) houses a qvevri museum — several halls and an 8-meter qvevri monument — and a cellar with 135 qvevris, from 50 litres up to 5 tonnes. Museum entry: 30 GEL adults, 10 GEL students, 5 GEL school students. Check opening hours before you go.

   Log Memory
3. 3 Taste the Grape That Stains Glass Permanently Wine · Price: low

   Pheasant's Tears in Sighnaghi pours wines made from grape varieties most winemakers have never heard of. This is where an American painter moved to a village and accidentally became the most important natural wine producer in the Caucasus.

   Where: Pheasant's Tears Winery and Restaurant, 18 Baratashvili Street, Sighnaghi 4200. In the center of the walled town, five minutes on foot from the city wall viewpoint. No reservation required for the wine bar; book ahead for full tasting flights. Expect to pay more than at other Sighnaghi restaurants.

   What: John Wurdeman — an American art student — heard a CD of Georgian folk polyphony at age 15, later moved to Moscow to study painting, first visited Georgia in 1995, came back for the 1996 harvest, and eventually bought a house in Sighnaghi overlooking the Alazani Valley. He met Gela Patalishvili, whose family had been making wine for eight generations. Together they opened Pheasant's Tears in 2007. The estate's Poliphonia field blend comes from a single vineyard planted with a few vines each of many indigenous Georgian varieties, out of some 525 known. The name comes from a Georgian folk saying: only a truly superlative wine can make a pheasant weep tears of joy.

   How: Order the Saperavi. It is a teinturier grape — meaning both the skin AND the flesh are red, not just the skin like in Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir. Almost every other red wine in the world is made from white-fleshed grapes with colored skins. Saperavi is so pigmented it will stain the glass. Watch the wine move. Ask the server to pour it next to a white wine — the contrast is the education. The name means 'to dye' or 'to paint.' John Wurdeman is an artist. The choice to make wine from this grape was not accidental.

   Backup: If Pheasant's Tears is fully booked, Twins Wine House restaurant in Napareuli offers a comparable tasting experience in a working cellar with 135 qvevris; wine tasting tour costs 17 GEL and includes 6–10 pours.

   Log Memory
4. 4 Drink Amber Wine the Way Romans Never Could Wine · Price: moderate

   Kakheti-style amber wine — white grape fermented for months with its skins, stems and seeds in a buried clay vessel — predates every wine style the modern world considers sophisticated by several thousand years.

   Where: Twins Wine House, village of Napareuli, 25km from Telavi. Check opening hours before you go. Wine tasting tour: 17 GEL per person, includes 6–10 wines across Rkatsiteli and Saperavi styles. The cellar tour is included — you will walk among 135 buried qvevris.

   What: When the Rkatsiteli arrives, it will be amber — not golden, not pale yellow, but a deep burnished amber the color of old honey. This is what happens when you ferment a white grape with its skins, seeds and stems intact for up to six months inside a buried clay vessel. During active fermentation the winemaker punches the cap down daily with a long pole. Then the vessel, already buried in the ground, is sealed with wet clay around its neck and a stone lid. The wine ages on its lees in the cool earth. What you are tasting is a white grape with the structure of a red wine — tannins from the skins, bitterness from the seeds, the whole biochemical complexity that comes from months of contact with every part of the grape. Modern natural wine drinkers call this 'orange wine', a name a British importer coined in 2004, and its modern revival came from winemakers in Friuli and the Gorizia Hills who imported qvevri. The style was invented here. The Georgian name, 'amber wine' (karvisperi ghvino), is younger: the poet Sandro Shanshiashvili coined it in his 1920 poem 'Wine'.

   How: Ask your guide at Twins to show you the museum's exhibit on the qvevri opening ceremony — the spring ritual where vessels sealed in October are cracked open. Ask what it smells like when a fresh qvevri of Rkatsiteli is first opened after six months underground. If the timing is right (April–May), you may get the answer as a demonstration rather than a story.

   Backup: Any family marani (wine cellar) in Kakheti will have Rkatsiteli in qvevri style. If the Twins tour is fully booked, ask your accommodation to connect you with a local family cellar — Georgian hospitality makes this almost always possible.

   Log Memory
5. 5 Decode the Soviet Extinction Event in a Glass History · Price: moderate

   Georgia is home to over 500 indigenous grape varieties, and Soviet planning narrowed what was actually planted to a handful of them. Pheasant's Tears is bringing back as many as possible — one variety per qvevri.

   Where: Back at Pheasant's Tears, 18 Baratashvili Street, Sighnaghi. Request the tasting flight specifically featuring lesser-known indigenous varieties — not just Saperavi and Rkatsiteli. The wine bar staff can guide this.

   What: Georgia is home to over 500 indigenous grape varieties. The Soviet collective farm system dismantled small-scale production and mandated quantity. Most of those varieties were abandoned. Some 525 Georgian varieties are known today. John Wurdeman and Gela Patalishvili planted a few vines each of many of them in a single field, the Poliphonia vineyard. Every wine in this flight that doesn't say Saperavi or Rkatsiteli on the label is a variety that almost disappeared. Some of them have no name in any wine reference guide written in English. A few have only one or two producers in the entire world.

   How: Ask the pourer which of the wines on the table is the rarest variety. Ask how many bottles of that wine exist in total. The answer will recalibrate what 'rare wine' means. For comparison, a first-growth Bordeaux produces hundreds of thousands of bottles per year. Some of these Georgian varieties produce a few hundred. This is what extinction tastes like when it's being reversed.

   Backup: In Tbilisi, the Georgian National Museum displays the oldest qvevri — carbon-dated at over 8,000 years — and the oldest carbon-dated wine grape pips in the world, while the Tbilisi Wine Museum (city center, 15 GEL admission including guide) has exhibits on Georgia's ampelographic history. Together they are the intellectual context for everything you've tasted. If you're traveling through Tbilisi, go either before or after the Kakheti trip.

   Log Memory
6. 6 End the Day at a Georgian Supra Before the Qvevri Is Sealed Again Adventure · Price: moderate · Optional

   A Georgian supra isn't dinner. It is a choreographed ritual of hospitality where food, wine, poetry, and memory are bound into a shared experience led by a tamada — a toastmaster whose job is to make you cry at the right moment.

   Where: Pheasant's Tears restaurant, 18 Baratashvili Street, Sighnaghi — or ask your accommodation host to arrange a family supra. The most authentic experiences happen in private homes, not restaurants. A family supra in a working marani will often include wine drawn directly from the qvevri with a long ladle.

   What: The tamada speaks first — a toast to God, then to peace, then to Georgia, then to the ancestors, then to the guests, then to love. You will be invited to add your own toast. Take the invitation seriously. Georgia's entire winemaking tradition is built on the idea that wine is not a product — it is a sacrament connecting the living to the dead to the unborn. The qvevri you drank from today was built by hand over three months, fired for six days, and sealed with beeswax while still warm. The wine inside it fermented in the dark earth of Kakheti for six months. The tamada's toast is the final step in a process that started 8,000 years ago.

   How: Drink slowly. Georgian wine culture does not rush. The supra can last hours. The correct response to a toast is to drain your cup — clay or glass — and turn it upside down to show it is empty. If you cannot drain it, touch the rim to your lips and lower it respectfully. No one will judge you. Georgian hospitality is not a performance. It is the actual point.

   Backup: If a formal supra isn't available, the Rtveli harvest festival (September–October) transforms every village in Kakheti into an open table. Doors genuinely are open, strangers are handed cups, and the smell of fermenting Saperavi hangs over the entire valley. There is no ticketed experience for this — it is simply what happens in Kakheti in autumn.

   Log Memory