In Georgia, Don't Call It Orange Wine
It's amber wine, thank you very much. Plus: a half-dozen amber bottle recommendations.
As someone who harbors pretensions about being part of the wine cognoscenti, I guess I should apologize: I have never visited the Republic of Georgia. I know that a lot of my wine friends have been there to experience the ancient Georgian winemaking culture that reportedly dates back to at least 6,000 B.C. But they are cooler than me.
I did write about about Georgian grapes such as rkatsiteli, kisi, mtsvane and saperavi in Godforsaken Grapes. But the closest I’ve ever come to Georgia is to dine at my favorite Georgian restaurant, in the Russian-speaking neighborhood around Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia, where I’ve enjoyed khachapuri, khinkali, and phkhali for years.
Fortunately for me, last weekend, a bunch of top winemakers from Georgia came to New York to pour more than 150 wines at an event called Amber Georgia, organized by Alexis Percival, partner in Ruffian wine bar and a friend of Everyday Drinking. Amber Georgia was a great example of the sort of themed, well-curated, focused—but totally fun and open to the public—events that should be be the future of wine tastings. (Karakterre a few weeks back was another example)
In Georgia, they’ve been making skin-contact wines, aged in earthenware vessels called qvevri, for thousands of years—long before the idea of orange wine became a mainstream trend. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Georgian winemakers have a bit of a chip on their shoulder to be lump in with all the johnny-come-lately orange wines. “Part of today is that they’re trying to reclaim ‘amber’ from ‘orange’ wine,” Percival told me on Saturday.