The Winery Rtvelisi (რთველისი) of Kakheti

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.