Kakheti Qvevri Winemaking

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 1,000 years in a PNAS-published paper. Georgia had 1,400 indigenous grape varieties before Soviet collective farming mandates destroyed most of them. 525 survived. Pheasant's Tears in Sighnaghi — founded by American painter John Wurdeman who moved here in the 1990s — preserves 117. Saperavi is one of the only teinturier grapes used in single-varietal winemaking: both skin AND flesh are red. The beeswax lining inside a qvevri does the same thing as oak barrel microoxygenation. It was invented 8,000 years earlier.