Qvevri wine is fermented in a large egg-shaped clay vessel buried up to its neck in the cellar floor. The surrounding earth keeps the temperature steady, and the shape lets the solids settle naturally. For whites, the skins, stems and pips go in too and stay for months. UNESCO listed the method as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013.

Is Georgian amber wine the same as orange wine?

Broadly yes — both are white grapes fermented on their skins. Georgians prefer "amber", partly because the tradition long predates the modern orange-wine trend and partly because it describes the colour more honestly. What is distinctive in Kakheti is the length of the skin contact, often months rather than days, and the buried clay vessel it happens in.

What does Saperavi taste like?

Dark and serious. Saperavi is a teinturier grape, meaning the flesh is red as well as the skin, so the wine is nearly opaque. Expect damson and black plum, high acidity, firm tannin and a spicy, savoury finish. It is less about sweet fruit than about structure, which makes it a very good grape for food.

Is Georgian wine sweet?

Most of it is dry, but Georgia does have a well-known semi-sweet tradition — above all Kindzmarauli, a naturally semi-sweet red made from Saperavi in Kakheti. Wines like these were exported widely during the Soviet period and still shape expectations abroad. If you want dry, look for Mukuzani, Tsinandali or a qvevri amber wine.

Georgia Wine: Regions, Grapes & Styles

Georgia sits in the South Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the mountains, and it has the strongest claim of anywhere to being the place wine began. In 2017 a team led by the molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern published chemical evidence of wine in pottery from two Neolithic villages south of Tbilisi, Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, dated to 6000–5800 BC. That is roughly eight thousand years ago.

What makes Georgia remarkable is not only the age but the continuity — the method never really stopped. Wine is still fermented in a qvevri, a large egg-shaped clay vessel sealed inside with beeswax and buried up to its neck in the floor of the cellar, or marani. UNESCO added the qvevri method to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013. Wine here is social infrastructure: the supra, the Georgian feast, is steered by a tamada, a toastmaster who leads the table through a long sequence of toasts.

What Georgian wine tastes like

Amber wine is the thing to understand first. White grapes go into the qvevri with their skins, stems and pips and stay there for months — a white grape handled exactly like a red. What comes out is not a crisp white at all.

Expect a deep amber colour, aromas of dried apricot, orange peel, walnut and black tea, and then the surprise: tannin, the grippy, stewed-tea drying sensation you normally meet in red wine. These wines are savoury rather than fruity, and they want food.

Saperavi, the main red, is one of very few grapes with red flesh as well as red skin, so the wines are almost opaque. Think dark plum and damson, brisk acidity, firm structure and a spicy, bitter-cherry finish. Serve amber wines cool but not cold; chilled too hard they lose the aromatics that make them interesting.

Signature grapes of Georgia

Rkatsiteli is the workhorse white; its name means "red stem", after the colour of the cane. Fermented in a qvevri it turns amber and gives dried apricot, beeswax and spice, while conventional versions are fresher and more appley. Kisi is thought to be a natural crossing of Mtsvane Kakhuri and Rkatsiteli, and is the more perfumed of the family. Mtsvane Kakhuri is lighter and floral; Khikhvi is rarer, low-yielding and good at building sugar. Saperavi is the red — deeply pigmented, high in acid and built to age.

KhikhviKisiMtsvaneRkatsiteliSaperavi

Wine regions of Georgia

Kakheti, in the east, is Georgia's wine heartland and the source of most of the country's wine. Around twenty of Georgia's thirty-odd protected appellations sit here, strung along the Alazani Valley beneath the Greater Caucasus. The valley has two sides. Tsinandali, known for dry whites from Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane Kakhuri, and Mukuzani, a dry Saperavi appellation, lie on the right bank. Napareuli sits across the river on the left bank, under the mountains. Further east, around Kvareli, Kindzmarauli makes the naturally semi-sweet red Saperavi that Georgia is best known for abroad.

Three Georgian bottles to start with

Tsinandali

A dry white blend of Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane Kakhuri made in the conventional way, without long skin contact — a gentle entry point before you meet the amber wines.

Kakhetian qvevri amber wine from Rkatsiteli

The real Georgian experience: months on the skins give a tannic, savoury white the colour of dried apricot. Try it with roast chicken or walnut-heavy dishes.

Mukuzani

Dry Saperavi from its own appellation — inky, firm and brisk, with dark plum fruit. Georgia's answer to a serious red for the dinner table.

Wine of Georgia

What Georgian wine tastes like

Signature grapes of Georgia

Famous styles from Georgia

Wine regions of Georgia

Kakheti

Three Georgian bottles to start with

Georgian wine questions

Learn the wine in your glass