Persati, Imereti (Georgia)
Ének Peterson is an daring young American woman (with a Hungarian mother as hinted by her first name) who settled in Georgia a few years ago after coming to the country for its culture and singing [By the way, coincidently, her first name, Ének, means song in Hungarian], ending up learning the language by herself, discovering the wine culture of the country and deciding to stay there for good.
She worked in a wine bar (not any wine bar, Vino Underground) in Tbilissi the capital and decided to
make wine herself. She bought a house outside a village at the foot of the Imereti mountains, with a small surface of vineyard attached to the house and makes wine the traditionnal Georgian way, her first vintage here was in 2016. I visited her from Kutaisi which is about 25 km away, taking a marshrutka, these convenient mini-vans that connect cities and villages in this country (pretty easy from the central bus station, and costs less than one Euro but you have to ask someone for the bus going to Bagdati, as the sign on the bus is only written in Georgian).
I had met Ének for the first time in San Francisco and Oakland where she also took part to Brumaire (the natural wine fair) along with several other women winemakers from Georgia (I actually tasted their wines in Millbrae at Vineyard Gate's shop two days after Brumaire). Ének's production is small but she is among the growing group of Georgian winemakers who export successfully their wines to Japan, Europe and the United States thanks to their age old natural winemaking. Georgian artisan wines are unique in many regards, first, the country is rightly considered the cradle of winemaking along with Armenia, Turkey (Ancient Greece) and a few other nations of the area. Then, if the soviet regime almost obliterated the traditional winemaking by establishing industrial wineries and farms for consumption in the whole of USSR, there had remained (like it is often the case in these circumstances) families in the back country who kept using the ageold buried amphorae (named qvevri here) to make long-maceration wines including for whites.
While these natural wines made along the ancestral fashion get exported to a demanding public overseas and can be found on the wine lists of the best restaurants of the world, they remain a small fraction of the wine production of Georgia. The majority is mainstream wines which are still largely exported to Russia which buys more than half of the total volume (see diagram on mid-scroll on this report) in spite of the bitter issue of Abkazia, the self-declared state on the territory of Georgia which seceded around 1992 with the support of Russia. But the traditionally-made wines represent the real soul of this winemaking country and will undoubtly conquer more amateurs, as well as influence some mainstream Georgian winemakers into considering a switch to quality instead of volume. Also, the countryside is very poor in Georgia and a well-trained winemaker using natural ways and non-chemical farming could easily lift the living standard of his family with just a small vineyard surface, if connected with the right markets abroad.
Here is the qvevri cellar which Ének set up on the basement of her house (it was formerly the kitchen,
that's why there's still a fireplace on the side). You can see a few of these buried amphorae, they're either full of juice or macerating skins in the juice. I asked Ének about the harvest if it was finished, she said yes, mostly, but there are still things to pick. Her parcel of whites behind the house (pictured on top) had already been picked, there are two varieties here, Tsolikouri and Krakhuna, with vines old about 20 years.
She says that when she saw this vineyard she thought, this is the one I want (this was 4 years ago). She had made her first wine in the country with Niki Antadze's grapes but she really wanted to make wine from her own vineyard, that's why she bought this house with the parcel. Right now that's the only parcel she owns in addition to a couple of rows with red grapes in front of the house but she's looking for another parcel close to here and this year she bought grapes from another village. She says she was initially against buying grapes but she needs to, her own surface is not enough.
Ének's production last year for example was something like 700 to 800 bottles and this year will be more comfortable, allowing for experiments and also a better living without having to do things on the side. Enek works at Vino Underground,
the natural wine in Tblissi (she intends to continue), driving there with her car, a Renault Kangoo Express which
she can use also I guess to carry grape boxes home now that she buys grapes elsewhere. Here present surface for the two white varieties in her babk yard is maybe 700 square meters but the vines have good yields, and the grapes she buys are from a much lower yield vineyard. There's no frost here, for one thing, and the disease you can have is mildew and black rot.
This year many growers left the grass because it helped protect the grapes against the burning sun (she lost a third of her contracted Aladasturi because the bunches were grilled by the sun). For her own parcel here she let everything grow unchecked (but her vines are trained higher than the ones around) but this winter she'll plow because the grass has changed too much and there are trees that begin to grow between the rows. There's a cherry tree for example, she plans to move it somewhere else. She has several fruit trees on her plot, like figs, apples, pears, plums, cherries, mulberries, pomegranates, hazelnuts... The law changed a year after Ének bought her house and if you're not Georgian you can't buy a house anymore under your name, you must do it through a third party.
If I'm right the volume of this qvevri (no skins there) is 320 liters. This vessel was full-blown bubling recently from what I understand but as the fermentation slowed down Enek is going to pour into it the demijohns that were put on the side for that purpose. The grapes here were picked some 10 days before and were pressed right after the foot crushing. She'll certainly need get one more qvevri here because sh'll get more grapes in the future. Here idea initially was to make a circle with a qvevri in the middle, the thing is find the right size of vessel for what she needs. To find these, there's one place along the road to Tbilissi who makes very good ones but he's been exporting a lot for 10 years (Puzelat, Gravner bought theirs here) and his prices are in Euro and not in Lari anymore. There's another maker who makes some in the mountains one hour and a half away and she says she has to drive there (with a truck because the road is pretty bad) and see the vessels, maybe in november (people here don't make qvevris in the deep of winter because you can't fire them properly), she'll go there with other winemakers who know abouit the different qualities of qvevris.
This other qvervi that isn't entirely underground is a new one, it is used here for the first time and holds both skins and juice. She used here grapes from the neighbors and the bubbling of the fermentation on wild yeast is underway. Grapes picked around 10 days before also. The length of the skin contact is still unsure, the first year she did 4 months. She says here in western Georgia (we're here in western Georgia) when they do skin contact it's not very long and they don't use the stems because they don't ripen. The 2nd year she did 6 months but didn't like the result and last year was 7 months and this year she'll see. For a 1,1-ton qvevri she wants to do an experiment which a friend of hers makes with reds : As it is fermenting and the skins come to the top, you take them out, press them and put the juice back in, gradually lessing the skin-contact part of the vinification (as skins go up to the surface along a certain amount of time). Some people burn a bit of sulfur at the top of the qvevri at the beginning but she never uses that. She knows someone who uses Argon. No CO2 bottles either, she lets the juice create its own CO2.
What Ének does here is moving the cap to turn around the cap, she does it right now every 4 hours or so, sometimes every 30 minutes when the fermentation is kind of exploding [and menacing to overflow], the goal is to avoid the cap to dry.
Ének says that Ramaz Nikoladze counts a lot for the winemakers of the Imereti rrgion for advice and inspiration (he's a few kilometers away from here) and she got a lot of help also from Achill when she wanted to know when to rack or when she had to put the qvevri in place and other things, he also grafted for her the Aladasturi in front of the house, he was very important for her training.
Asked if other family winemakers in the area work naturally, she says no, they use these sprays in the vineyard, like one for example who has a very nice parcel with amazing grapes and she spent the last 4 years to convince him to spray naturally but there's a chemical against worms which he says he can't stop to use (he does it at the beginning of spring) because he wouldn't have grapes if he stopped, and this, whatever the money you offer him for the grapes or the tons of grapes you guarantee him you'll buy.
On her own vines Ének never sprayed outside Bordeaux mix and sulfur. She thinks that if you spray a chemical for worms, then you'll get worms. Same if you spray against shield bugs which have been a problem here recently (the last 2 years, particularly), then you'll get them nonetheless. I understand that wherever you go you have this problem of fear that prevents conventional growers to eschew
chemicals in the vineyard, seems to be going deep in the farmers' psyche around the world (and it's surprising in Georgia where I guess the small
farms had only a very late access to all these chemicals, compared to France for example).
When she finds someone that don't spray like she did recently in a village at some distance she's happy to offer them to buy the grapes, these people often live the entire year with the sale of their grapes, so it's also a way to support the people around, they get better pay for the organic grapes and this may convince others to do the same. That's what she wanted to do with growers near her house but there was no way, they were so convinced that the chemicals were unavoidable... Typically, local winemakers sell wine by the 200 liters at a time for a wedding, with prices like 3 Lari (0,9 €) a liter if the wine is make with water and sugar addition, and 5 Lari (1,5 €) when it's made from pure juice.They could sell 4 times this price if farming organic but they're not aware of this market. Of course for her it was easy because she worked at Vino Underground and even before she made her first wine she had already met the importers.
Aladasturi, a red variety pictured here, owes it name from the time of the muslim invasions of the region : although wine is formally forbidden by islamic rules, the muslim conquerors loved the wine made from this grape which was thus named Aladasturi which means something like "allowed by allah" [probably with a bit of pushing by local vignerons who wanted to save their beverage...].
Here are some of the grapes (Tsolikouri) she purchased and they're sorting them quietly, box after box, before putting them in a qvevri. In the soviet times the production of wine was industrial, Enek says that in the Khaketi region there would be a wine factory for a given number of villages and farmers would have to sell their grapes to the factory, you couldn't make wine at home. Through this system they also kept track of which grapes you'd grow : Georgia had a very large diversity in terms of varieties and the communists would take away the national identity with strictly limiting their number. For example in Kakhet for the red it was only Saperavi, they'd plant it on large surface in the valley. For the whites you could plant Rkatsiteli and a couple others [the communists alas aren't the only ones to destroy the indigenous wine culture, just see how the French wine authorities discreetly eradicate Pineau d'Aunis, Grolleau and other irreplaceable varieties...]. Enek's mother emigrated from Hungary to the United States (in 1987) before the end of communism but when she says it here in Georgia, people say that Hungary had a fake communism (meaning pretty open and lax) while they had the hard version... I can understand that because from what I kniow, locals in Hungary were allowed to keep making wine for themselves from their few rows in the backyard.
I was impressed at the number of bees turning around here and looking for this great sweet juice to lick,
the bees seem to be less in danger here compared to France (we see more wasps, hornets & bumblebees) where the use of newly designed pesticides as well as disease decimate them (but the older chemicals that have been used for decades certainly contributed). I think that in Georgia like in the rest of the former Soviet Union they were unwittingly protected from the inventiveness of the modern chemical industry whe have in the West, and possibly today their limited financial means prevents them to get the most potent of these pesticides. It was a pleasure to see these bees foraging among the boxes waiting for the crushing. I bought some honey on the market, the guy had just a handful of small glass pots, the honey was dark and with some bitter edge typical of mountain honey, excellent.
Asked what people around think of this young American girl coming here to make wine, Ének says they think she's crazy, but it is also because it's not very common for a Georgian woman in a village to live on her own and do all the work including the vineyard work. A Georgian woman in her situation would at least hire someone to spray the vines, and that's not something she wants to delegate because she
needs to be sure it's done properly, and same for the pruning
which is so important. I find the use of these basins very ingenious actually, as soon as the grapes were properly crushed, David would pour the basin into the qvevri, then fill it anew with other grapes.
Ének began the crushing of the Tsolikouri, this is a lot of work with these baskets, the volume is maybe 1,5 to 2 tons. She had a one-ton bucket where she used to do the crushing but actually it's a more arduous work to take out the crushed grapes than bring all these small basins as you go. Small family wineries here usually have a machine to do the crushing and then press right after (there's rarely skin contact in Imereti mainstream wineries). And what they do routinely in this region also is take the skins after pressing, add sugar and water and make some kind of cheap wine [piquette is what it was called in France, it was forbidden in 1945]. Actually she says, this method was brought by a French guy back in 19th century to increase the volume of wine and this became a local tradition. This cheaper wine is the one people would drink at home every day, keeping the real wine for guests. I know that it is coming back in France right now as natural winemakers are making small batches of it, I think the French wine administration could reconsider its ban, as long as the labels says clearly what's inside.
Here is a video showing the traditionnal pressing and crushing like some people still do here in the countryside and which reminds us in France that artisan/natural winemaking can be even more simpler than what is done usually, no press even second hand and very few tools indeed. These grapes are Tsolikouri, but 5 different kinds of Tsolikouri (some have compact bunches, some loose), and she purchased them from a village (Tsitelkhevi) which is 15 minutes away on the other side of a mountain at a much higher elevation than here. It is one of the villages which in the 19th century was known for having some of the best vineyard of the country. The grapes from Persati and Baghdati were often kept for the private use of the King of Western Georgia who was residing in Kutaisi. The parcel where she bought these grapes is so steep that they used an ox to pull the boxes out, 600 kg at the back of an ox... She learned of this opportunity to buy these grapes only 2 weeks before and when she travelled there she was amazed, the vineyard and the grapes were gorgeous. They'll take care of the spraying but she will go there every once in a while to check. These farmers rely on the grape sale to live. They have a neighbor who works naturally and has also fruit of the same variety, he had already found a buyer but next year she may buy him some too.
_Tsolikouri & Krakhuna 2017, no skin maceration here, just crushed, pressed in a small vertical press and then straight into a qvevri for 2 or 3 months (shorter time because she hadn't enough juice to fill a qvevri). What a color ! Pretty clear even though unfiltered. No added sulfites here. Bottled straight from demijohns, very slow and by gravity. I feel some white tannin here still, but there was no skin contact. Very enjoyable wine. Asked about barrels Enek says that some people experiment an élevage in oak after vinification in qvevri, there's no cooperage in Georgia but Bastien Warskotte a Champagne native who set up a winery here with his Georgian wife began to import a few of them. Ének says it is interesting and she might try to have some wine go through a barrel élevage just to see, but it will be possible only if her volume is large enough, right now she hasn't enough wine to try such experiments. When he had his last shipment of barrels from France, Bastien offered other winemakers the possibility to get some of them. She says he's doing other very interesting experiments like picking the grapes at different times from the norm or using local honey for the prise de mousse of his sparklings, sourcing chestnut honey from the mountains so that it's completely natural. Vincent Jullien of Lapati Wines has done a very good work also, she says, plus these guys have trained in wine schools and they bring another knowledge compared to what you get here. You can get a degree in enology here but it's a department of the Agriculture University and focused on factory wines; usually local students who can continue afterthen by going to study in Bordeaux.
I asked Ének if she makes Chacha (the local name for brandy) with the pressed skins and pomace, she says no until now but she'll make some this year, albeit for her private use and in small quantity. She has no stills and will have to bring the tanks with the fermented material somewhere, there's no mobile distillers here, like there's no service company for the bottling of the wines, and by the way that's something which could be useful here because it's very difficult for many small wineries to keep the quality even from bottling to bottling. For the distilling of the chachasome people have set up a system around their fireplace, others on a gas stove. If she wanted to sell chacha it would be complicated, you need to register a separate entity.
Ének also opened a 2018 of this wine, still the blend of Tsolikouri and Krakhuna, a very classy vintage which is the one she prefers, this wine is indeed outstanding with these thin white tannins. Spent 7 months in qvevri plud also long additonnal time in demijohns. This is the wine she had brought to San Francisco this spring for Brumaire. She spoke to me in French he about this wine, Enek speak excellent French, she studied it at school in the U.S. and also lived a year in Rennes (Brittany).
Otherwise for the winery the paperwork is quite heavy here and she tries to have other people do it for her, especially that if she is fluent in Georgian, written Georgian is very different and you need all sorts of documents especially for export (and this is asked by the Georgian administration), with this and that certificate, analysis, and you have to register every year. All this considered she adds this is probably as simple a system would get and they could impose many other requirements. A few years ago, and this is why the Natural Wine Association of Georgia was formed, because the administration wanted to have every single bottle for export pass by a tasting committee, and wines will too much Brett or volatile acidity would be blocked. the association pleaded that these wines were ordered by prestigious restaurants like Celler Can Roca in Barcelona, Noma in Copenhagen and many others of the same class, they view the wines are pairing perfectly with this or that dish, so who are these people of the National Wine Agency that this wine shouldn't be allowed for export ? So this lobbying worked in this case, which is encouraging although there are more things to ease for small producers. Also when tension rose on the Russian export front years ago (Russia was blocking Georgian wine) the government understood the importance of new export countries and it facilitated the trips to La Dive Bouteille in France for natural winemakers, even helping with funding, this was welcome. But since Russia has returned buying the wines and the Georgian administration has forgotten about this, Russia and China together buy so much Georgian wines that it's not even clear where the grapes come from [part of what is shipped must be fake wine of some sort]. Enek says there came a new importer from China in Imereti who wanted to buy 300 000 bottles, which is the volume of 10 harvest for most winemakers, there isn't even that available volume of wine at once in this region...
Ének tells me about Zero Compromise, the natural wine fair that takes place every year in Tblisi with the Georgian natural winemakers. It started in Vino Underground the wine bar where she drives 5 days a week to work. She was rthe one who contacted the prioducers, both Georgian and foreign to invite them, and in this first year it was packed with 30 to 40 winemakers, so the following year with more candidates they split the event on several locations including Vino Underground and now it's on the Silk Factory, a venue large enough to receive everyone. Good opportunity for the producers like her to meet buyers and importers, and a few foreign producers come as well like Thierry Puzelat, Louis-Antoine LUYT (Chile), Fabio Gea (Piedmont) and others... They also set up a wine festival in Kutaisi in winter (2nd weekend of december), Amerimeri, so that Imereti people can also discover these wines.
Speaking of the harvest Ének says she has still the few red vines to harvest in front of the house, the one of a neighbor which she farms and tends herself and a week later there will be the reds she buys to these people in the mountains 15 minutes away. She is very happy to have found this farmer (so recently, it was by pure chance 2 weeks before this visit took place) and the relation will probably be long term, meaning she'll be able to make wine from their fruit every year, increasing substantially her yearly volume.
Regarding her sales, Ének exports to the United States (Terrell Wines), Australia (Vinous Solutions), Japan (Nona and Siddhi - not sure of the spelling), Germany (Vin Bien of Olaf Schindler in Berlin).
Speaking of the red that is being poured here, I realize I have no notes for this red, sorry, just remember it was lovely and easy to drink. Ének stands on the external staircase used to go upstairs to the living quarters. She and her friend already have brought some improvements to the house but there's still work to do. It must be quite cold in the winter although the region and the country (apart from the mountain range) has rather mild winters).
At some point a visitor showed up, it was a young man named Vano whose job is to monitor the cellars and the vineyards for the Natural Wine Association to check the practices on the ground. He's been trained for these certification controls and the Natural Wine Association is serious in its intent to get members respect the requirements. Varno also makes wine himself and he has a day job also (he does these visits during his days off). I ask him if he has sometimes issues with people during his visits, he says it happens sometimes, they send a report with recommendations and the winemakers have to comply on the following visit.
While we kept sipping these nice wines downstairs with repeated pours, Ének walked to the room upstairs to prepare some food and I had one of these generous Georgian meals for which the country is so well known abroad. The food in this country is really excellent, so many good ingredients to work from. We sat all around the table, the room was spartan but it was a heartful lunch or dinner (actually it was in between, like around 5 pm). Ének Peterson is herself member of the Natural Wine Association, and he visited her for his routine checks.
Here's the wine Ének opened for the meal, Freya's Marani 2017, a Tsolikouri and krakhuna blend, an intense orange wine with a beautiful, integrated astringency and tannin, it all blows on the palate and there's such a length... Went through 6 months of skin contact in qvevri. 12 % only, very easy to drink.
I was pretty impressed by Enek's work and wines, and how she succeeded on the two fronts of managing the wine bar Vino Underground in Tbilisi and running her own winery in this house in Persati all the while improving bit by bit her equipment and the house amenities (there's no running water for example, they get it from a well with a pump), and I guess the life in the countryside is not easy everyday, especially when you're not Georgian. But she's certainly helping lifting the region with opening new opportunities for local growers and winemakers who can be tempted to work differently.
Here is a picture I shot in another region, near a small town where dozens of decaying sanatoriums and thermal bath lay abandoned and overwhelmed by vegetation. These building, complete with rooms and thermal facilities date from the Soviet Union years, the architecture going from the neo classical style to the futurist modern like here. Really an incredible place, at the time of the Soviet Union trains would bring here Soviet citizens and Russians for vacations or water/mud treatment. Some of these buildings today are occupied by refugees from Abkhazia who left their houses behind. Here are a few pictures by a Dutch photographer about this unique place. Some oth these thermal-bath palaces will be renovated hopefully in the future and this little town could become again a magnet for thermal baths lovers...
Not related to Georgia (except remotely because I met Ének in SF earlier this year) but there'll be soon a natural wine event in San Francisco, Wine Call SF, featuring wines from the pacific Coast and Europe (see the winemakers' list). Tickets on sale here. Exciting program, I'd certainly attend if I were around.
Download the print-size poster file here.
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