From the atlas
Dakishvili Family Vineyards
Kakheti family winery in Shalauri, Telavi, producing white, amber, rosé, red, sparkling, and dessert wines from qvevri and stainless steel, led by one of Georgia's most technically authoritative winemakers.
At A Glance
| |
| Region | Kakheti, Georgia |
| Village | Shalauri, Telavi |
| Main grapes | Kisi, Saperavi, Pinot Noir |
| Signature wine | Sparkling Kisi Pet Nat |
| Defining feature | Dual fermentation: qvevri for complex, savoury wines; stainless steel for clean, fruit-forward styles |
The Producer
In the early 1900s, Orthodox priest Simon Dakishvili began making wine in the village of Shalauri for church services. His family had arrived in this part of Georgia a century and a half earlier, having migrated from the Argun gorge in Chechnya in the 1750s. What Simon started as liturgical work, his descendants turned into a commercial winery, with three oenologists, Gogi, Temur, and Ilona Dakishvili, overseeing production across an 11-hectare estate.
Gogi Dakishvili trained in viticulture and oenology at Odessa, in what was then the Soviet Union, and has since been recognised as a founding winemaker at several major Georgian producers and a pioneer in the revival of qvevri wine technology in Georgia. The winery operates under the Dakishvili Family Vineyards name; Gogi also runs a separate label, Orgo, with his son Temur.
Place
Shalauri lies in Telavi, the main town of Kakheti, Georgia's principal wine-producing region in the eastern part of the country. Kakheti stretches along the Alazani valley between the Greater Caucasus to the north and the Tsiv-Gombori range to the south. The combination of a continental climate, dry summers, and clay-rich alluvial soils has made this region the foundation of Georgian viticulture for thousands of years.
The Telavi district sits at the heart of Kakheti and is home to many of the region's oldest estates. For Dakishvili, the location means working within the same grape-growing landscape that long shaped the qvevri tradition the family now practises alongside modern stainless steel methods.
Story
Simon Dakishvili's early-1900s church wine was not a commercial enterprise; it was wine made for a specific sacred purpose in a specific village. The family's roots in the area went back to the 1750s, when their ancestors crossed south from the Argun gorge of Chechnya into Georgia. The church wine tradition gave the Dakishvili name an association with winemaking that carried through generations.
Gogi Dakishvili formalised that connection through serious technical study. He trained at Odessa and went on to work as a founding oenologist at several of Georgia's larger producers before returning to develop the family's own estate in Shalauri. His work there coincided with a broader resurgence of interest in traditional Georgian qvevri fermentation, and he became one of the recognised figures in that revival. The family philosophy, as the estate describes it, combines traditional experience and modern knowledge, with both reflected in the choice to offer wines made by two different methods side by side.
Vineyards And Cellar
The estate farms 11 hectares and produces up to 50,000 bottles annually across white, amber, rosé, red, sparkling, and dessert wines. Eight qvevri of 2,000 litres each are buried beneath the cellar floor, the traditional Georgian method of maintaining stable fermentation temperatures through the vessel's contact with the surrounding earth.
Qvevri fermentation, in Gogi Dakishvili's account, works primarily through thermal properties: the buried clay vessel insulates the fermenting wine and promotes temperature eddy currents that naturally mix the must without mechanical intervention. Thin-skinned grape varieties suit this method best, because their tannins remain gentle and the fruit character comes through without being obscured by excessive extraction. The stainless steel tanks produce a different result: clean, fruit-forward wines that work well on their own. The qvevri wines are more complex, savoury, and tannic, and pair more readily with food. Both approaches run in the same cellar, with the grape variety and the intended style determining which vessel is used.
Wines
The range covers every major colour and style: still whites and reds, amber wines made from extended skin contact in qvevri, rosé, sparkling, and dessert wines. The sparkling wines under the Dakishvili Family name include a Saperavi Rosé Brut Nature from 2015, a Pinot Noir Rosé Brut Zero, and a Kisi Pet Nat from 2021.
The Kisi Pet Nat takes the indigenous Kakheti white grape through a pétillant naturel process, bottled before fermentation is complete so that the wine finishes in bottle without added liqueur. The Saperavi Rosé and Pinot Noir Rosé take two different red grapes through a zero-dosage sparkling method, producing dry, fruit-led sparkling rosés. Across the sparkling range, the wines show clean aromatic character without the volatile or reductive notes that can appear in natural sparkling production.
In The Glass
The stainless steel wines are clean and fruity, with direct grape character and fresh acidity. The qvevri wines shift register: more savoury, with firmer tannin from skin contact and a complexity that comes from the slow, temperature-stable fermentation in the buried clay vessels.
The Kisi Pet Nat, made from a thin-skinned Kakheti white grape, shows stone fruit and floral aromatics with a lively, fine mousse and dry finish. The Saperavi Rosé Brut Nature uses one of Georgia's most widely planted red varieties, which gives the wine a dark berry character alongside the dryness of the brut nature format. The Pinot Noir Rosé Brut Zero works with a grape variety that produces delicate, red-fruited sparkling rosés when fermented without dosage.
A Bottle To Understand It
Start with the Kisi Pet Nat 2021. Kisi is an indigenous Kakheti white grape, and the pétillant naturel format ferments it in bottle, producing a lightly sparkling wine with no added dosage and minimal intervention between the vine and the glass. The wine's stone fruit and floral character comes directly from the grape, and the fine mousse from the in-bottle fermentation gives it a texture distinct from conventional sparkling wines. It is not a qvevri wine, but it shows the estate's commitment to working with Georgian grape varieties and low-intervention methods. The qvevri range shows a different, more savoury face of the same philosophy.
Anecdote
In the early 1900s, Simon Dakishvili, an Orthodox priest in Shalauri, began producing wine for church services. The Dakishvili family had been in Georgia since the 1750s, having come south from the Argun gorge in Chechnya, and Simon's wine was made for a specific liturgical purpose inside the village where they had settled. Generations later, his descendant Gogi Dakishvili trained as a professional oenologist at Odessa, worked as a founding winemaker at several major Georgian producers, and returned to Shalauri to establish the family's own estate. The winery that now produces up to 50,000 bottles annually of sparkling, amber, rosé, red, and dessert wines occupies the same village where Simon pressed his first church batch.
Final Word
Dakishvili Family Vineyards pairs one of Georgia's most technically experienced oenologists with 11 hectares in Kakheti and a range that moves from qvevri-fermented amber and red wines to clean stainless steel whites and low-intervention sparkling wines made from indigenous Georgian grapes.
Sources
- https://www.dakishvili.ge/about/
- https://i-winereview.com/blog/index.php/2024/01/31/gogi-dakishivli-current-releases-from-georgias-master-winemaker/
- https://www.jamesflewellen.com/essays/2017/9/27/a-masterclass-in-georgian-winemaking
- https://www.georgianwinehouse.com/producer-accordian/project-one-f5w4d-3ksj8-k9xjt-972mg