Top 100 red wines of Kakheti - Page 2
Discover the top 100 best red wines of Kakheti as well as the best winemakers in the region. Explore the varietals of the red wines that are popular of Kakheti and the best vintages to taste in this region.
Discovering the wine region of Kakheti
Kakheti is the most important wine region in Georgia in quantitative, qualitative and even historic terms. Almost three-quarters of the country's wine Grapes are grown here, on land that has been used for viticulture for thousands of years.
Kakheti is home to some of the oldest human habitations in the entire Caucasus region, and archaeological findings have suggested that wine has been produced here for several thousand years. The region's strong relationship with wine and Vine was captured in Georgia's famous hymn 'Thou Art a Vineyard', written in the 12th Century by King Demetrius I.
A historical Georgian province, Kakheti is not an official administrative province in the modern day. Viniculturally speaking, the area is unofficially divided into several sub-regions, and even a number of microregions. This creates a huge variety of mesoClimates for viticulture with an equally large variety of grape varieties found throughout. The most significant of these Center around the villages of Tsinandali, Telavi, Gurajaani, Kvareli, Sagarejo and Sighnahi, which dot the banks of the Alazani River as it flows from the Caucasus Mountains to the Mingecevir reservoir in western Azerbaijan.
Kakheti has a transient continental climate with mild to subtropical temperatures as well as arid conditionds to Ample rainfall for viticulture. Predominately, viticultural areas have an arid climate with rainfall conserved to the winter months. Interestingly, in the particularly humid areas of Shida Kakheti, irrigation is required due to the high level of evapotranspiration. The nutrient-poor soils here are something of a trademark for viticulture as their discovery saw the early Georgian vignerons (as far back as 6000 BC) stumble across near-perfect Terroir millennia before the concept of terroir was formalized and given a name.
Discover the grape variety: Saperavi
Originally from Georgia - Kakhetie region - where it has been cultivated for a long time. This variety is found in many countries such as Russia, Bulgaria, the Caucasus and Crimean republics, etc. Care should be taken not to confuse it with others, which are admittedly quite similar, but which bear the name Saperavi, generally followed by another name. In France, the "real Saperavi" is practically unknown, it is however registered since November 2012 in the Official Catalogue of wine grape varieties list A1.
Food and wine pairing with a red wine of Kakheti
red wines from the region of Kakheti go well with generally quite well with dishes such as recipes .
News from the vineyard of Kakheti
What the Decanter team is drinking this Christmas
Tina Gellie, Content Manager and Regional Editor (Australia, South Africa, New Zealand & Canada) It was a big year of Decanter travel for me, heading to Napa and New York in June, South Africa in October and most recently a week each in Margaret River and South Australia. These trips have formed the basis of my festive selections. Christmas lunch on North Stradbroke Island (reunited with my family after four years, no thanks to Covid) always starts with oysters, followed by a bucket of prawn ...
Andrew Jefford: ‘The situation holds Georgian wine developments in check’
I’d visited Kakheti, Kartli and Imereti before – Georgia’s dominant central wine-producing zones; but never the wild exterior. From the ice-crisped cemetery grass of the 11th-century church of St George, dominating the mountaintop village of Mravaldzali, we looked north across the mountains of the Greater Caucasus, Europe’s highest. The silence, and the vista, was daunting. Hundreds of dry, drab valleys lost themselves in as many snowy peaks. Russia lay beyond. There was, apparently, a way over: ...
Georgia’s indigenous grapes: reviving hidden treasures
‘When I started producing wine, the wineries were all in a very bad condition,’ said Askaneli Brothers president Gocha Chkhaidze, recalling the poor state of the Georgian wine industry shortly after the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. ‘There was inadequate sanitation, a lack of know-how and old-fashioned bottling lines. People were unable to make wine sustainably, vineyards were not sufficiently cared for, agronomists were unskilled and used to harvest the maximu ...