Winery Casa DomneascăBurgund Sec

‘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 ...

He was 23 at the time, making his first steps with the family company, unknown in the UK; I was 31 and trying to get a new career going. I met him in Portugal; he became my first wine friend. I got to know his family, and he mine; we learned and explored together. His father Rolf ran the business – effectively; though he seemed more interested in his collections of corkscrews, antique firearms and American cars than in wine. Dirk’s flat was full of old typewriters. Ceramic frogs covered every av ...

It was a spot of bedtime reading that did it. Desperately seeking a research topic to finish the Master of Wine course, a chapter in Don and Petie Kladstrup’s Champagne mentioned the 1911 riots: Champagne houses were razed by angry growers, the sabre-wielding French army charged down the streets of Epernay, and one of the biggest reasons for the discontent? Wine fraud. This was something I could get into. With my journalistic juices flowing, a scratch of the surface revealed a paucity of researc ...