Sparkling Wine Festival Tbilisi

Sparkling Wine Festival Tbilisi

Under the Ferris wheel at Mtatsminda Park, 32 producers of Georgian sparkling wine pour in a setting no other wine festival can replicate: 770 metres elevation, roller coasters running overhead, Tbilisi glowing below. Atenuri — Georgia's only sparkling PDO, from Chinuri grapes on limestone — was the wine of Georgian kings in the 11th century. It went dormant for 30 years under Soviet rule and was revived in 2019. Pet-nat is called 'Machari' in Georgian: grape must caught mid-fermentation in buried qvevri, a technique that predates Champagne by centuries. Bagrationi 1882 once produced 24 million bottles of Soviet Champagne annually from the same Tbilisi cellars.