The Oldest Newest Wine Region in the World

我手中玻亚搏电竞璃杯中的酒是盘子上李子的黑紫色。它也闻起来有成熟的李子，是由一个9岁男孩制作的。

我坐在佐治亚州首都Tbilisi的一家餐厅Bina N37的一张桌子旁，位于一栋住宅大楼（名称为“公寓号37”）。它由前医生祖拉·纳特罗什维利（Zura Natroshvili）和他的妻子Nino Baliashvili拥有，他仍然是医生。最初，公寓将成为他们的家庭住宅，但是在纳特罗什维利（Natroshvili）开始在外面的露台上酿造葡萄酒之后，他决定使用大多数人可能不透明的逻辑，以便在其中开设一家餐厅更有意义。亚搏电竞

The terrace itself was originally supposed to have a pool for Natroshvili’s son, Irakli. But once Natroshvili added a raised platform of sand and pebbles and buried 42qvevrion it—qvevri, pronounced “kwev-ree,” are the large, beeswax-lined earthenware jars used in traditional Georgian winemaking—the pool was a nonstarter.

“所以我told Irakli, ‘Listen, instead of a pool, you can make your own wine and sell it.’ And he was like, ‘OK, sounds good!’ He’d saved up about 500 lari, so we bought a qvevri and some Saperavi grapes with that, and a year later he made 1,200 lari selling his wine.” Natroshvili told me all this over plates of qartuli salata, Georgia’s omnipresent cucumber-and-tomato salad;pkhali，类似p的菜of finely chopped greens and ground walnuts; and bowls of spicy, garlicky, entirely addictive marinated cherries. They were the first few courses of a meal that was going to last well into the night. Irakli, sitting next to him, looked shy but proud.

不管他是否知道，伊拉克利（Irakli）正在延伸超过8000年的酿酒传统。亚搏电竞根据考古证据，它是地球上最古老的。但是快到了午夜。当您9岁时，即使您携带在新石器时代首次点燃火的火炬上亮着的火炬，这意味着它已经过去了睡前。

Tasting traditionally made wine in Georgia—which means wine fermented and aged in qvevri that have been buried in the earth, wine without industrial yeasts and without additives, wine as simple and mysterious as wine innately can be—is like taking a trip back through those eight millennia. Nestled between the Greater Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus mountains, Georgia forms a bridge between Asia and Europe. Over the centuries, invaders swept through it: Persian, Greek, Roman; Turks, Mongols, Russians. And through all that, Georgians have gone on making wine. (Cooking, too: Georgian cuisine balances Asian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European traditions, and borrows, deliciously, from all of them.)

The day after my dinner at Bina N37, I headed north from Tbilisi to visit Iago, both the name of the winery and the man himself, Iago Bitarishvili. That’s characteristic of wine culture here. Most Georgians drink truly local wine, meaning wine that you get from the guy down the road who you’ve been getting wine from since, well, whenever. (It’s like recommendations for car mechanics used to be: “Transmission? Oh yeah, I know a guy. He’s great.”)

但是大约15年前，情况开始发生变化，其中一些在公路的酿酒师开始装瓶和出售其更远的葡萄酒，首先是在第比利斯（Tbilisi），现在是全世界。亚搏电竞Bitarishvili在那场革命的先锋队中。他告诉我：“ 2003年，我开始瓶装并出售我的葡萄酒。亚搏电竞那是我唯一与父亲，祖父不同的事情。”我问他家人酿酒了多久。亚搏电竞他说他不知道。但是现在他帮助组织了第比利斯举行的年度新葡萄酒节。亚搏电竞改变时代的另一个迹象是：2009年，当他和他的合作伙伴发起活动时，他们只能找到15个酿酒厂参加。亚搏电竞在2017年，有400多个。

他的Bitarishvili倒我一个amber-orange玻璃2016 Chinuri. The wine’s aroma is lightly resinous; its flavor suggests apricots and dry herbs. The wine is complex, but the winemaking is deceptively simple. Grapes—their skins, pulp, seeds, and stems—go into the qvevri (a traditional Georgian winery looks like a room with circular holes in the floor, since the qvevri are buried up to their necks in the ground). The qvevri are sealed, the yeasts on the skins of the grapes do their work, and between three and six months later, the qvevri are opened. Skins, stems, and seeds are ladled out, and the wine is moved to another qvevri to age until it’s ready. Bitarishvili says, “You also have to be skinny to make wine in Georgia because you have to climb into the qvevri to clean them out.”

He adds: “I say to people, ‘Don’t say anything about our wine after one glass. Don’t judge it after one glass.’ If you take a wolf out of nature, it changes. Wine is the same.”

Later I'm at the wine bar Vino Underground back in Tbilisi, drinking a glass of the 2017 Kereselidze Wine Cellar Aleksandrouli-Mujuretuli. I’m thinking several things. First, that I like this intense, feral red very much. Second, I will never in my life know how to pronounce its name. And third, that the song playing on the speakers is by the Foo Fighters. Have you taken a Georgian wine out of nature if you’re drinking it to “My Hero”? I don’t know.

我所知道的:不可能提取格鲁吉亚n wine from Georgia’s history. At Papari Valley winery, owner Nukri Kurdadze tells me, “During the Soviet era, the qvevri tradition was almost extinguished.” That is also true of many of the more than 400 local Georgian grape varieties. “But Georgian grapes survived because of Georgian farmers. We’re rebellious.” Over a glass of his amber 2016 Rkatsiteli, a powerfully tannic white with a tangerine-like scent, he adds, “The only word I can use to describe how I felt when the U.S.S.R. fell is happiness.I could not imagine this monster could collapse. I can survive any kind of hardship, but my only dream is that what happened here during the Soviet era never happens again for me or for my children.”

亚搏电竞这里的葡萄酒感觉在欧洲可能曾经是这种情况的方式融入了生活的结构，但不再是真正的。到处都有葡萄酒：亚搏电竞每顿饭，每一个家中。每个乡村市场，每个加油站，每个路边摊位出售随机塑料桶和盒装陶瓷洗涤剂也出售葡萄酒 - 通常用该或那个邻居制成的可回收塑料水瓶，无标签，像水一样无所不在，必要。亚搏电竞马克斯弟兄在第比利斯以外的沙夫纳巴达修道院说：“一切都很特别，但是葡萄酒需要特别的护理。”亚搏电竞

He’s in his early thirties, with a lustrous black beard and a gentle manner. We’re in the cellar at Shavnabada, a Georgian Orthodox monastery originally built in the 12th century and rebuilt in the 17th, shut down again in the Soviet era and reopened after that. Eleven monks live and work here. All around the stone building the boxwoods are in bloom, and the air is filled with their scent. Brother Markus’ cell phone rings—the ringtone is thebrrring, brrringof an old-fashioned rotary phone. He glances at it and puts it back in the pocket of his robe. As to why they started making wine again, he says, “Georgia is a country of hospitality. When someone comes to your home, you need to offer them bread and wine.”

A 2004 Mtsvane, a white wine that spent 13 years sealed in qvevri, is the color of burnished wood and tastes of nuts and smoke. A 2007 Saperavi is darkly currant-y, dry, and tart. He comments as I drink it, “We don’t filter our red wine or use any additives—that’s not a respectful thing to do to wine. It’s the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Typically, as a professional, I spit wines that I taste. At the moment that seems wildly inappropriate. Besides, the Saperavi is gorgeous. I drink it. Brother Markus adds, “Our purpose as monks is to make people happy. It’s not to make money. We put our soul and our heart into our wine, and that’s why it’s different. God is always present in this process.”

When I ask him if he ever thinks about people thousands of miles away, in Denver or Chicago or Seattle, drinking his wine, he says, “There is a God, and God is everywhere in the world. We don’t have to see each other to have that connection, so the U.S. is not that far, really.”

Supra: the word literally translatesas “tablecloth.” But, as I discover the next night at Pheasant’s Tears winery in the hilltop town of Sighnaghi, perched above the fertile Kakheti valley—what it really translates to is more like “massive, high-spirited feast involving endless plates of amazing food and enough wine to pickle an elephant.”

Pheasant’s Tears, founded in 2007 by an American expat and artist, John Wurdeman, and Gela Patalishvili, was one of the first Georgian wineries working in a traditional mode to send its wines to the U.S. (In many ways Wurdeman has functioned as an informal ambassador for Georgian wine as a whole.)

Supras是庆祝的；他们体现了丰富和喜悦。他们还需要敬酒。正如Bina N37的Natroshvili告诉我的那样：“至少在该国西部，第一个吐司总是归于上帝。在东方，这是和平，因为那部分一直在战争。然后是那些经历，新生活和孩子，然后向女人，爱，朋友和继续的人。至少25个。通常更多。”以及所有这些烤面包，食物。亚搏电竞在同上，菜肴到达，但在清空时很少被清除。很快，桌子位于盘子下。

There are supras at weddings, supras at birthdays, supras at funerals, supras when your team wins or when your friends get together, supras because, what the hell, it’s Saturday. At Pheasant’s Tears that night the general reason was because Wurdeman was returning from a long trip, except his plane was delayed in Canada. His staff, who are all Georgian, decided to celebrate anyway.

Platters of foraged mushrooms with herbs; khachapuri, the buttery, cheese-filled flatbread; rolled thinly sliced eggplant with walnut sauce, or nigvziani badrijani; chakapuli, the country’s classic lamb stew with fresh tarragon; tender roast chicken in a milk-based garlic sauce, or shkmeruli—that was just the start. And with all that, the raised glasses:gaumarjos,or “victory,” the equivalent of our “cheers;”gagimarjos,or “here’s to you;”Gadvimarjos，或“这是对所有人的。”我失去了轨道。但是在傍晚，由于格鲁吉亚版本的格拉帕（Grappa）的几轮Chacha的推动力，我们甚至最终向Freddie Mercury提出了敬酒。工作人员已经决定卡拉OK井井有条，导致整个乔治亚人的桌子都打了出来：“ Scaramouche，Scaramouche，您会做Fandango吗？”在模糊地近似专业钥匙的东西中。在佐治亚州，就像生活一样，您开始理解，有些事情是普遍的：葡萄酒，美食，朋友，人类的联系，甚至是“波西米亚狂想曲”。亚搏电竞亚搏电竞

Georgian wines won’t be on the shelves in your supermarket, but they’re worth the hunt: Try using an app like Wine-Searcher. Here are five great ones to seek out.

2016Papari Valley Chinuri Rkatsiteli Cuvee($25)Amber-colored and lightly tannic, this blend of two of Georgia’s classic white grape varieties is toasty and savory.

2007Shavnabada Saperavi($35)Qvevri在Shavnabada修道院的地面上埋葬了八年，使这种强大的泥土复杂性赋予了这种强大的红色层。

2016Okro的葡萄亚搏电竞酒Rkatsiteli（$ 20）橙色的风味，并带有热带和树木果实的音符，这种传统上使白色的酿酒厂来自一个小型酿酒厂，该酿酒厂还在山顶小镇Sighnaghi经营着一家非常好的餐厅。亚搏电竞

2014Orgo Rkatsiteli（$ 20）Floral and apricot-y, this skin-fermented white comes from one of Georgia’s top winemakers, Gogi Dakishvili.

2015年野鸡的眼泪Saperavi($18)漆黑的和漆黑的红色，这种强大的红色在倒入之前应该有一段时间。