Georgia: The Birthplace of Wine
Before France, before Italy, before any winemaking civilization the modern world celebrates, there was Georgia. Nestled between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, this small country of barely four million people carries an astonishing secret: it is the oldest wine-producing nation on earth, with an unbroken tradition stretching back more than 8,000 years.
Archaeological evidence unearthed in the village of Gadachrili Gora, south of Tbilisi, has pushed the origins of Georgian winemaking to approximately 6,000 BCE — more than two millennia before the ancient Egyptians began cultivating the vine. What the excavations revealed were ceramic jars, or qvevri, bearing chemical traces of tartaric acid, malic acid, citric acid and succinic acid: the unmistakable fingerprints of fermented grape juice.
The Qvevri: An Ancient Technology for Modern Times
At the heart of Georgian winemaking lies a vessel unlike any other in the world — the qvevri (ქვევრი). These terracotta amphorae, sealed with beeswax and buried to their necks in the earth, function as natural fermentation chambers where the temperature remains constant throughout the year. Grape juice is poured in together with the skins, seeds and stems — the whole grape, crushed — and fermentation unfolds slowly, over months, in contact with the earth itself.
The result is what the wine world now calls “orange wine” or “amber wine”: a wine of extraordinary depth and texture, with tannins that come not from oak barrels but from prolonged skin contact. In 2013, UNESCO inscribed the ancient Georgian tradition of qvevri winemaking on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — a recognition that this ancient craft belongs not only to Georgia, but to all of us.
Rkatsiteli and Saperavi: The Great Varieties
Georgia is home to over 500 indigenous grape varieties — more than any other country in the world. Among them, two stand above the rest in stature and renown.
Rkatsiteli (რქაწითელი), whose name translates literally as “red-horned,” is perhaps Georgia’s most widely planted white grape. When vinified in qvevri with extended skin contact, it produces wines of golden-amber colour with flavours of dried apricot, quince, chamomile and walnut. When made in the conventional style, without skin contact, it reveals a fresher face: crisp acidity, floral aromas, bright citrus.
Saperavi (საფერავი) — the name means “dye” or “paint” in Georgian, a reference to the grape’s ability to colour everything it touches — is one of the rare teinturier varieties in the world, meaning both its flesh and its skin are deeply pigmented red. The wines it produces are among the most powerful in the Caucasus: inky in colour, rich in tannin, with flavours of blackberry, plum, leather and dark spice, capable of ageing for decades.
Kakheti: The Soul of Georgian Wine
Of Georgia’s many wine regions, it is Kakheti — a valley in the east, sheltered by the Greater Caucasus to the north and warmed by a continental sun — that holds the greatest prestige. Here, in villages whose names read like a litany of Georgian history — Telavi, Tsinandali, Mukuzani, Kindzmarauli — the vine has been cultivated for millennia without interruption.
It was in Kakheti that the tradition of the marani was born: the dedicated winemaking cellar, its floor honeycombed with buried qvevri, its atmosphere thick with the scent of fermentation and wood smoke. To enter a marani is to enter a sacred space. Georgians do not speak of wine as a commodity; they speak of it as a companion, a gift from God, the living expression of their land.
Wine at Sherekilebi
At Sherekilebi in Athens, we bring these traditions to the table with reverence and joy. Our wine list is built around authentic Georgian producers — small estates, family wineries, artisan vignerons who still bury their qvevri in earthen floors and harvest by hand in September.
Whether you are tasting your first amber wine, exploring the structured power of an aged Saperavi, or discovering the floral elegance of a Mtsvane, we invite you to experience Georgia’s oldest story — the story that began 8,000 years ago, and continues, glass by glass, in our restaurant today.