Georgian wine making dates back 8000 years of culture and tradition. Wine is an integral part of Georgian people as they greet and farewell human life with wine on their tables and through story telling during “supra” – traditional Georgian feast. There are 525 native Georgian grape varieties in Georgia alone, out of 2000 in the world, with around 22 being used commercially for wine making.  So why don’t we know these wines as well as French or Italian? Why is Saperavi so new to the industry despite being one of the oldest and most unique varietals in the world?

This is largely because Georgia was a formerly Soviet state and used to supply all its produce to the former USSR republics. Georgian wine industry was behind an iron curtain for most of the 19^Th Century. At the same time European countries such as Italy and France enjoyed a globalisation wave and modernisation of industry. According to Pomarici et al. 2021 Thanks to market and production trends and to strong national and European policies, the sector changed radically: from unspecialised to specialised wine-growing; from a fragmented to an integrated agro-industrial supply chain based on efficient farm wineries; from a production almost totally destined for the domestic market to largely export-oriented production.

Today Georgia has again rebuilt itself and flourished and is eagerly modernising practices to put its footprint on the global wine arena. The collapse of the Soviet Union and a 10-year embargo on wine imports to Russia meant that Georgia had a chance to revitalise its wine industry and several sophisticated modern wineries have emerged. Smart policy implementations and government investment into marketing and wine industry has given Georgia a chance to showcase their practices, processes, and traditions to the world. Today we can buy Saperavi wines in many parts of the modern world, including Australia.

Georgia has adopted European wine making techniques, engaged world famous sommeliers and latest technological advances into some leading wine brands such as Tbilvino. Together with their traditional wine making techniques, ancient tradition and combining modern knowledge and technology they have created a very unique wine segment of amber wines that combine the two processes together to get the best of both worlds in one amazing offering. Tbilvino Amber Kisi and Amber Rkatsiteli represents just that. A very aromatic yet light bodied sun kissed wine is achieved with less complexity.