Georgian Wine Culture: Qvevri, Amber Wine and the Supra

First wine

c. 6000 BC

UNESCO listing

2013

Kakheti share

70%

Glass in Tbilisi

6-15 GEL

Every wine country has a claim. France has terroir, Italy has tradition, and Georgia has the oldest evidence of winemaking anywhere on earth, plus something rarer: the method survived. Walk into a village house in Kakheti in October and the family will be treading grapes into a clay vessel set into the floor of a cellar, exactly as the archaeology says their ancestors did. This page is the context for the rest of our wine coverage: it explains what you are drinking and why it matters here, then gets practical about what it costs and where to try it. For the buying and touring detail, the regions guide, the cellars guide and the Tbilisi wine bars page take over.

8,000 years

The evidence sits in two low mounds in the Kvemo Kartli plain south of Tbilisi, Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, Neolithic villages of round mud-brick houses. Pottery from them carries tartaric acid and the other chemical fingerprints of grape wine, and the sherds date to around 6000 BC, which a 2017 study led by the archaeologist Patrick McGovern with the Georgian National Museum and the National Wine Agency published as the earliest known winemaking in the world, some 8,000 years ago. The dig, a joint project with the University of Toronto, is still running. The country has spent the years since the study putting 8,000 on every label it can.

The continuity matters more than the date. Wine ran through the country's conversion to Christianity in the fourth century (King Mirian III made it the state religion in 337, and Saint Nino, who converted him, is said to have carried a cross made of vine wood), through Persian, Ottoman and Russian rule, through Soviet collectivisation, which turned Kakheti into a bulk supplier for the whole Union, and through the Russian embargo of 2006, which cut off the market that had taken most of the exports and forced the industry to sell to Europe and Asia instead. By 2019 the country was shipping 94 million bottles to 53 countries, and the family cellar never stopped in the meantime.

The qvevri

Visit a cellar, or more likely someone's home, and you will be led to the marani: a room with a stone or earth floor and a row of round lids set into it. Under each is a qvevri, an egg-shaped clay vessel lined with beeswax that can hold anything from a hundred litres to several thousand, buried to the neck so that the earth keeps it at a steady temperature all year. Grapes are pressed, and the juice goes in with the skins, stalks and pips; the vessel is sealed and the wine ferments and then sits on that mass for at least five or six months before it is drawn off and the qvevri is scrubbed out for the next harvest. No pumps, no temperature control, no additives beyond what the grape brought with it. The pointed base collects the sediment; the shape keeps the skins moving during fermentation.

Making the vessels is its own craft, passed down in a handful of villages: Vardisubani in Kakheti, Shrosha, Makatubani and Tqemlovana in Imereti, Atsana in Guria. Georgia put qvevri winemaking on its own heritage register in 2011 and UNESCO added it to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013. Most commercial wine in Georgia is now made in steel like everywhere else, but the qvevri is the reason the country's wine tastes like nowhere else, and the small producers who came back to it in the last twenty years are the ones the wine world talks about. Our qvevri wine guide covers the process in detail.

Amber wine

The world calls it orange wine. Georgians call it amber, and they have a point: the colour runs from gold to honey to copper, and it is not a fashion but the way white wine was made before someone decided to take the skins out. Rkatsiteli, Mtsvane or Kisi grapes ferment on their skins in the qvevri for weeks to months, and the skins give the wine its colour, a tannic grip you normally meet only in reds, and flavours of dried apricot, walnut, honey and black tea. Serve it a little warmer than a white, and drink it with food: the tannin handles lamb and walnut sauces, and the acidity cuts through khachapuri.

The grapes

Forget Cabernet and Chardonnay; the international grapes are grown here but they are not the point. Georgia has close to 400 native varieties on record, of which a few dozen are grown commercially, and two of them make most of the wine. Saperavi, whose name means dye, is a teinturier grape, red in the flesh as well as the skin, which is why its wines are close to black and can age for decades; it makes the dry Mukuzani, the semi-sweet Kindzmarauli and most of the country's serious reds. Rkatsiteli is the white workhorse of Kakheti, apple and quince in steel, nuts and tea in the qvevri, and the base of Tsinandali. The others to know are in the table.

The regions

Five regions make wine and one of them dominates. Kakheti, the valley of the Alazani east of Tbilisi, grows about seventy percent of the country's grapes and holds nearly all the famous appellations; it is where the tours go and where a visitor should go first. Kartli, around Gori and Mtskheta, makes lighter, fresher wines. Imereti, around Kutaisi, is the lighter western qvevri style. Racha-Lechkhumi, in the mountains north of Kutaisi, makes the semi-sweet reds, Khvanchkara above all. Adjara and Guria on the coast are small and coming back. Our regions guide matches each to a trip; the Kakheti guide covers the one most people choose.

Reading a label

Georgian labels mix grapes, places and styles, and the places are the ones to learn, because they are protected appellations: 29 of them are registered with Sakpatenti, the national intellectual property office, most of them in Kakheti. The name tells you the grape and the style.

Wine at the supra

You cannot separate the wine from the table it is drunk at. A supra is a structured feast run by a tamada, the toastmaster chosen by the host, who proposes the toasts in an order that has barely changed in a century: to God or to peace, to Georgia, to the reason for the table, to parents and then to the departed, to children, to friendship and to the host, and everyone drinks after each one. The toast can be passed on for elaboration, the alaverdi, and a toast made directly to you is the one you are expected to drink to properly. The wine is usually the host's own, from the family qvevri, and it keeps coming for hours. The rules for guests are simple: drink to the toasts rather than between them, eat constantly, and do not propose a toast unless the tamada hands you the floor. The supra was added to Georgia's intangible heritage list in 2017; our supra guide and tamada guide cover the whole evening.

Homemade wine and rtveli

A great deal of the wine drunk in Georgia never sees a label. Almost every family with a yard in the wine regions has vines, and the harvest, rtveli, is the year's big family event: relatives come back to the village to pick, crush and fill the qvevri, and the work ends in a supra. In Kakheti it runs from late August or early September into October, and the scale is industrial as well as domestic: by 28 September 2026 the National Wine Agency reported nearly 100,000 tonnes of grapes already processed in the region. The western regions pick later, Racha into November. Family cellars in Kakheti take guests for a picking day, and the Gurjaani harvest festival is on 10 October in 2026; our rtveli guide lists who takes guests and what it costs. In May, on the second Saturday, Tbilisi's New Wine Festival in Mtatsminda Park opens the previous autumn's qvevri, free, 11:00 to 18:00.

Homemade wine varies from excellent to close to vinegar, and the etiquette is the same either way: if a host pours their own wine, drink it and praise it. It is a gift, not a product.

What to order

What it costs

At the day's National Bank rate, 6 GEL is about $2.30 and 58 GEL about $22. Wine is cheap here by any standard except the local one; the tasting fees at family cellars are usually credited against bottles you take away, and a Wine Yard N1 tasting with lunch at 80 GEL is a full afternoon, not a flight of glasses.

Where to taste

In Tbilisi, the wine bars do most of the work and no car is needed. Vino Underground at Galaktion Tabidze 15 in Sololaki poured only organic and low-intervention wine before anyone else in the city and still has the best-edited list; 8000 Vintages at Tabukashvili 27 off Rustaveli has the biggest range, glasses from 6 GEL and a 55 GEL guided tasting with a board; DADI on Shalva Dadiani 4 and Baasi in Sololaki, Nino Meris at Sioni 13 in the Old Town and Wine Merchants in Chugureti round out a walkable evening. Our wine bars guide has hours and prices for a dozen of them.

In Kakheti, the cellars we would send a friend to are family ones with a table: Giuaani at Manavi, under an hour from Tbilisi, Shalauri and Akido around Telavi, Vakho Oqruashvili's marani at Velistsikhe, Wine Yard N1 and TEMI further east; among the big producers, Khareba's 7.7 km wine cave at Kvareli and the Tsinandali Estate museum are the two worth the stop. Sighnaghi and Telavi are the base towns. Our cellars guide has booking terms for each, and the day trip guide costs the four ways of getting there for one, two and four people.

Chacha

When the wine is drawn off, the pomace left in the qvevri is distilled into chacha, the grape spirit that every family in the wine regions keeps. Commercial chacha is bottled at around 40 percent; the homemade kind is not measured. It arrives at the end of a supra or at breakfast in a guesthouse, and the polite amount is one. Our chacha guide covers the rest.

Tips

Keep planning

Food & Wine

Georgia's Wine Regions: Kakheti, Kartli, Imereti, Racha

Georgia's four wine regions compared for a trip: what each grows, the appellations to look for, what tastings and drivers cost and where to base yourself.

12 min read

Food & Wine

Best Wineries in Georgia: Prices, Tastings, How to Visit

The wineries worth visiting in Georgia, from Kakheti family cellars to Khareba's tunnels and Chateau Mukhrani, with 2026 tasting prices and how to get there.

14 min read

Food & Wine

Best Wine Bars in Tbilisi 2026: Where to Drink and Taste

Ten Tbilisi wine bars with addresses, what each is good for and what a glass costs in 2026, plus guided tastings from 40 GEL and how to order Georgian wine.

11 min read