The best wines of Manavi

‘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 ...

The launch of the 2022 Collection takes the total number of Last Drop releases to 27 since the company was founded by drinks industry veterans Tom Jago and James Espey in 2008. Tom’s daughter Rebecca Jago is now the company’s MD. This year’s releases include The Last Drop’s first Japanese whisky: a blended malt that includes whisky from the fabled Hanyu distillery, taken from the beginning and end of its brief lifespan (1980-2000), as well as malts from other unidentified Japanese distilleries. ...

World wine production in 2021 is set to fall by 4% versus last year, to around 250 million hectolitres (mhl), equal to 25bn litres and close to the historic low witnessed in 2017, the International Organisation for Vine & Wine (OIV) has estimated. Its figures are preliminary, but they highlight the ‘severe impact’ of ‘adverse climatic conditions’ on the 2021 vintage in parts of Europe, said OIV director-general Paul Roca during a virtual press conference. Europe’s big ...