The Auswine Forum

Hi fellow imbiber's,

I am looking for some advice on Georgian wine. I am living in Kazakhstan now and looking for some guidance in picking a good wine.

Saperavi seems to be the standard variety though my very basic Cyrillic makes it hard to decipher the varietals. Does anyone have some good producers and or varietals to try?

Also fantastic vodka is much cheaper than poor wine making wine a hard sell in the region. I found an Italian shop selling some Italian and French wines (Vajra Barolo even ~AUD$200) but all standing upright in a well heated store. Picked up the Langhe neb and rosso to try (~$50 and $30).

Looking forward to any insight
Clive

Hey vovo,

I was in Georgia in 2015 for a couple of weeks. We split our time between the Caucasus mountains and the Kakheti region, which is the main wine region. Like you say, Saperavi is probably the most well known. The problem is there are so many varieties over there it's easy to lose track! From memory, others to look out for include Rkatsiteli, Mtsvani and Tsinandali, all of which are dry. That's all I can offer unfortunately, and like all wine they'll vary in quality.

I bought home 3 bottles of Pheasant's Tears 2013 Saperavi which is probably the best known Georgian producer. Opened a bottle a couple of weeks ago and it was great. It had such an intruiging nose on it.

Sorry I can't be of more help! Enjoy the search and look forward to hearing about any good finds!

Cheers
Paul

The key piece of advice is to make sure you pick a wine which is DRY not sweet or semi-sweet...

Made that mistake before! Semi-sweet red wines are ... different, shall we say.

Hahahaha, I know exactly what you mean, apparently sweeter red is popular here. Again my limited knowledge of cyrillic is a problem (and Georgian writing is even harder) so it really is a lucky dip.

I've tried a lot of the Pheasants Tears wines and they are interesting, but not great QPR - at least here in the Netherlands.

Even if your not a fan of sweet red, I do recommend trying as many differant styles as possible - its amzingly easy to pick up a taste for things you didnt like before.