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| Kachreti, Georgia |
"The vintage" is the grape harvest in Georgia.
Kakheti, an administrative region in Georgia, proudly claims ownership of the best wines in Georgia.
In Georgia, there is white wine, red wine, and black wine. There's also a wine that I don't know how to categorize that is the color of iced-tea.
Saturday, TLG took us volunteers to a vocational college in Kachreti, a village in Kakheti. The students learn how to make wine in the traditional way, allowing the grape juice to ferment in clay pots buried in the ground. The pots are called qvevri.
We volunteers took a token turn at harvesting grapes, placing them into buckets, which were then placed in a gigantic basket, which was on a donkey cart.
We accompanied the donkey and wagon to the stone and wood wine house, where there was a little ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of this year's vintage.
In Georgia, males stomp the grapes. I don't know if they must be virgins.
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
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| Kachreti, Georgia |
Georgians, like other wine-makers, do use casks for aging the wine. But they have another tradition in which they place the future wine in clay jugs (kvevri) and bury them in the ground to ferment.
1 comment:
Great description of wine-making in Georgian, we do use both methods, but wine making by clay jugs is the oldest tradition and there are thousands of remains of old jugs found by the archaeological findings, cheers and hope to see in Kakheti again...Zaza
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