Aladasturi

The Story

Aladasturi carries one of the most evocative origin stories in the wine world. Its name derives from the Arabic "Allah Dastur" — "Allah's Consent" — a name reputedly coined when Arab conquerors swept through Georgia in the 8th century. Despite Islamic prohibition on alcohol, these conquering soldiers fell so deeply in love with the wine made from this local grape that they justified drinking it by declaring Allah himself had approved it. A grape so good it converted its conquerors.

Native to the Guria region on Georgia's Black Sea coast, Aladasturi is classified as a true Colchic variety — part of the ancient Caucasian genetic lineage that gave the world wine 8,000 years ago. Botanically, it still grows wild-vine in Guria, exactly where it always has. It became the most celebrated grape in Georgian folk culture: no other Georgian variety has inspired more poems, songs, proverbs and folk sayings. For centuries it was the grape of abundance, the grape of joy.

Then came phylloxera in the late 19th century, which wiped out much of central Georgia's Aladasturi plantings. Soviet collectivism in the 20th century reduced Georgia's 500+ indigenous varieties to a handful of bulk-production workhorses. Aladasturi survived, but barely. The vineyards that remained were often abandoned or blended away into anonymity.

The revival began quietly — with farmers like Dato Kobidze in the mountain village of Erketi in Guria, who discovered 100-150-year-old Aladasturi vines still growing maghlari style (trained up living trees — alder, mulberry, cherry) exactly as they had for generations. Today a new generation of natural winemakers has rediscovered this grape, making small-production qvevri wines that land on Michelin-starred wine lists from New York to Copenhagen.

Insider Story

The deeper story of Aladasturi is the story of Georgian wine survival itself. During Soviet rule, Stalin's agricultural policy forced the country into monoculture viticulture: thousands of acres of Rkatsiteli and Saperavi for bulk production, everything else uprooted. In Kakheti alone, officials destroyed more than 500 native varieties. The west — Guria, Imereti, Samegrelo — fared slightly better because of its distance from Soviet agricultural centers, but Aladasturi still nearly vanished.

The secret keepers were the rural farmers. In villages like Erketi in Guria, families maintained Aladasturi vines through the Soviet era on private household plots — the one space where individual agricultural practice persisted. These vines trained up trees in the traditional maghlari system, some 100-150 years old, were never registered, never collectivized, simply kept alive because the families knew their worth.

What insiders know: Aladasturi is genuinely difficult to grow. It's not very resistant to fungal diseases and mildew despite centuries of co-evolution with Georgia's humid Black Sea climate. The humid, subtropical conditions of Guria and Imereti (vineyards from sea level up to 500 meters) mean constant disease pressure. The maghlari training system — raising vines up into tree canopies — was specifically developed to lift grapes above the damp ground, reducing fungal risk. This is why old-vine Aladasturi trained maghlari style is still the most coveted expression.

The grape is also a late ripener in a cool climate, with harvest in late October and Vartsikhe Marani's qvevri Aladasturi not harvested until December in some years — remarkable for a variety at these latitudes. Khareba winery actually dries picked Aladasturi Amarone-style for 4 weeks before fermentation to concentrate the naturally light structure. The variety's Achilles heel — thin skin, light body, modest tannin — becomes its greatest asset in the right winemaker's hands: a pale Georgian Pinot Noir, with pure fruit and haunting fragrance.

Technical Deep Dive

Aladasturi belongs to the GTA chloroplast DNA haplogroup, sharing 100% cpDNA identity with Chkhaveri, Krakhuna, Tsitska, and Tsolikouri — a tight genetic cluster native to western Georgia's Colchic zone. Genetic analysis confirms no movement from outside Georgia; this is a pure autochthone, evolved in the ecological conditions of Kolkheti over millennia.

Ampelographically: large leaves; medium-sized bunches, cylindrical, often winged, moderately dense. Deep blue-black oval berries with thick skins and firm flesh — unusual combination for such a light-bodied wine. The thick skins suggest natural disease resistance was a selection pressure in the humid Colchic forests.

In qvevri winemaking (the UNESCO-recognized method, inscribed 2014), Aladasturi shows two distinct profiles depending on skin contact duration:

**Light/rosé style (0-14 days skin contact):** Typical of Baia's Wine "Gvantsa's" Aladasturi. Direct press or very short maceration. Result: pale ruby to deep salmon, strawberry and raspberry aromatics, crisp acidity, creamy mouthfeel. Fermented with native yeasts, bottled unfiltered with minimal sulfur.

**Full red qvevri style (30% skin contact, 5 months in qvevri):** The Vartsikhe Marani method. Winemaker Kakha Chotiashvili ferments the must with 30% of the skins for 5 months in buried clay qvevri. Result: lean, fruity, refreshing — notes of pomegranate, red cherry, bay leaf, figs, barberry. Velvety tannins, clean finish. Not filtered before bottling; each bottle hand-numbered and signed.

**Khareba "Monastery" approach:** Late-harvest Aladasturi, susceptible to botrytis when left late, is instead dried Amarone-style for ~4 weeks post-harvest before qvevri fermentation. Produces concentrated plum and dark cherry with milk chocolate finish, dry — transforms a light grape into a contemplative wine.

Imereti's traditional method uses a churi (the local name for qvevri), with less chacha added than in Kakheti, and the wine racked off skins after roughly 2 months of aging before transfer to barrels. This produces the most commercially approachable expression: light body, pleasant tannins, immediately drinkable. Sugar at harvest: 19.5-21.5% potential alcohol; acidity 8.5-9.4 g/l — ideal for fresh, food-friendly wines.

Industry Secrets

Three things the Georgian wine trade knows about Aladasturi that most consumers don't:

1. **It's the most poeticized grape on Earth.** Georgians are serious about this claim: no other grape in Georgia's 500+ variety library has been referenced in more folk songs, poems, proverbs and toasts. It appears in polyphonic Gurian songs (themselves UNESCO-recognized), in medieval Georgian poetry, and in village sayings still used today. The grape isn't just agricultural — it's cultural infrastructure for the Guria region. This cultural capital is completely invisible in export markets.

2. **The wild-vine population is a living genetic reserve.** Aladasturi still grows wild in Guria. This means Georgia has an in-situ conservation population of one of the world's most historically significant grape varieties — a living gene bank. Researchers from the Agricultural University of Georgia have been mapping this wild population as part of broader Georgian vine conservation work. The 500+ indigenous Georgian varieties represent approximately 15% of the world's total grape diversity, concentrated in a country the size of West Virginia.

3. **Pet Nat is the breakout format.** Baia's Wine "Gvantsa's" Aladasturi Rosé Pet Nat is currently one of the hottest Georgian natural wine exports in the US and European markets. Priced at $28 retail, it's the format that gets first-time buyers into Aladasturi. The still red qvevri versions — Lagvinari's organic Aladasturi ($22-25), Dato's Aladasturi from Guria (100-150-year-old maghlari vines) — are the insider bottles. Dato Kobidze's wine comes from a single 100-year-old maghlari vine in Erketi, Guria. Total production: extremely small. These are the bottles appearing on natural wine shop shelves in Portland, London, Berlin, and Copenhagen before anyone in mainstream wine journalism covers them.

More red grapes

• Albilla
• Aleatico
• Aleksandrouli
• Alexandrouli
• Alfrocheiro