Georgia · Other producers

Giorgi Natenadze

Wild-foraged, qvevri-fermented wines from the Meskheti highlands of southern Georgia, made from grape varieties lost to Ottoman destruction and recovered by Natenadze over more than a decade of mountain forest searching.

The producer

Giorgi Natenadze makes wine from grape varieties that had no names, no records, and no living winemakers to ask about them. His winery sits in the Samtskhe-Javakheti highlands of southern Georgia, at elevations between 1,000 and 1,650 metres near the Turkish border, in a region that produced no wine at all for roughly four centuries. Ottoman forces destroyed every vineyard in Meskheti during their occupation. The tradition disappeared so completely that when Natenadze pressed his first harvest in 2009, he had to find his grapes by walking the mountain forests and identifying vines that had survived by climbing wild up fruit trees.

He has spent more than a decade at that work, discovering 40 rare varieties and identifying 24. From 2016 he began replanting 30 hectares of ancient terraced land near Vardzia that had been bare since the Ottoman period, with 12 hectares and 24 varieties already restored. His three wines, Meskhuri Red, Meskhuri White, and Tamaris Vazi, ferment in buried clay qvevri for six months with full skin contact, without oak, irrigation, or commercial yeasts. Total production does not exceed 1,200 bottles across all labels in any year.

Known for

Indigenous grape recovery, extreme-altitude viticulture, qvevri fermentation with extended skin contact

Notable facts

The story

The Vine That Outlasted an Empire

Sometime during his years of searching the mountain forests near the Turkish border, Natenadze found a vine he could not date by any of the usual measures. The trunk was too wide, the wood too weathered, the growth pattern too ancient for anything he had seen in cultivated vineyards. He estimated it at over 400 years old. If that dating is anywhere close to accurate, the vine had been growing in the forest before the Ottoman forces arrived in Meskheti, had continued growing through the centuries-long occupation that destroyed every cultivated vineyard around it, and was still carrying fruit when he walked past it in the early 2000s. It had no name, no record, and no winery to deliver its grapes to. He took cuttings.

The Vine That Outlasted an Empire

Sometime during his years of searching the mountain forests near the Turkish border, Natenadze found a vine he could not date by any of the usual measures. The trunk was too wide, the wood too weathered, the growth pattern too ancient for anything he had seen in cultivated vineyards. He estimated it at over 400 years old. If that dating is anywhere close to accurate, the vine had been growing in the forest before the Ottoman forces arrived in Meskheti, had continued growing through the centuries-long occupation that destroyed every cultivated vineyard around it, and was still carrying fruit when he walked past it in the early 2000s. It had no name, no record, and no winery to deliver its grapes to. He took cuttings.

From the atlas

Giorgi Natenadze

At A Glance

The Producer

Giorgi Natenadze makes wine from grape varieties that had no names, no records, and no living winemakers to ask about them. His winery in the Samtskhe-Javakheti highlands of southern Georgia sits at elevations between 1,000 and 1,650 metres near the Turkish border, in a region that produced no wine at all for roughly four centuries. Ottoman forces destroyed every vineyard in Meskheti during their occupation. The viticultural tradition disappeared so completely that when Natenadze pressed his first harvest in 2009, he had to find his grapes by walking the mountain forests and identifying vines that had survived by growing wild up fruit trees.

He has spent more than a decade at that work. He has discovered 40 rare varieties and identified 24. He has located vines over 100 years old and at least one specimen he estimates at over 400 years old, still fruiting. His annual production does not exceed 1,200 bottles across all three labels, because the recovered vines, the extreme altitude, and the qvevri cellar he uses do not allow for more.

Place

Samtskhe-Javakheti is the southernmost wine-growing region of Georgia, a high plateau and mountain zone that borders Turkey to the south and Armenia to the southeast. The Meskheti sub-region within it sits at altitudes where summers are short and cool, nights drop sharply even in August, and fruit ripens slowly. Those conditions produce wines with bright acidity and fresh fruit rather than the fuller, richer profile of Georgia's lower-elevation Kakheti region. The elevation band Natenadze works, from 1,000 to 1,650 metres, is among the highest in the Caucasus for viticulture.

The Ottoman occupation severed the region's winemaking continuity so thoroughly that none of the grape varieties Natenadze works with appeared in Georgian ampelography. The place labels his bottles carry, Meskhuri and Samtskhe-Javakheti, signal a recovered geography as much as a legal appellation.

Soil And Site

The Samtskhe-Javakheti highlands sit on volcanic soils formed by ancient lava flows and mountain erosion. The terrain is steep and terraced, with parcels that require hand farming and cannot support machinery. Natenadze dry-farms everything with no irrigation; the vines that survived in the forests grew on their own roots, climbing fruit trees, and he has propagated them in the same spirit. From 2016 he began rehabilitating 30 hectares of ancient terraced land near Vardzia that had been bare since the Ottoman period. Twelve hectares and 24 grape varieties have already been restored.

Story

Meskheti had wine before the Ottomans arrived. The region appears in medieval Georgian chronicles as a place of vineyards and cellar culture, connected to the court of Queen Tamar in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Ottoman occupation that began roughly 400 years ago ended all of that. Vineyards were destroyed, wine villages were abandoned, and the local grape varieties either disappeared or retreated into the forests, growing wild without anyone to tend or name them.

Natenadze grew up in this landscape knowing that the winemaking tradition had existed and knowing that almost nothing of it had survived. He began searching the forests systematically, cataloguing what he found, and eventually pressed the first Meskheti vintage in 2009. That required grapes nobody had made wine from in living memory, fermented in buried clay qvevri without oak, sulfur, irrigation, or commercial yeasts. The 2009 harvest was the first commercial wine the region had produced in over 400 years.

From 2016, the project expanded beyond wild-vine recovery to active replanting. The Vardzia terrace rehabilitation is the largest undertaking: 30 hectares of land identified from old maps and records, cleared and replanted with the varieties Natenadze recovered from the forests. The bottles now carry names like Meskhuri Sapere and Akhaltsikhuri Tetri that did not exist in any published catalogue before he wrote them down.

Vineyards And Cellar

The foraged vines grow on their own roots, ungrafted, climbing fruit trees in the mountain forest the way they have for generations. Natenadze harvests them by hand and ferments them in qvevri, the buried clay vessels that are the traditional Georgian fermentation and ageing container. Six months of skin contact in the qvevri extracts colour, texture, and aromatic complexity from the grape skins and pulp before the wine moves to stainless steel for finishing. No irrigation. No oak. No commercial yeasts. The altitude and the wild character of the recovered varieties determine what ends up in the bottle.

The qvevri method matters for these wines because it was the method used in Meskheti before the Ottoman period. Fermenting in buried clay with extended skin contact is not a contemporary affectation here; it is the closest Natenadze can get to what the region would have done before the gap.

Wines

Meskhuri Red blends three foraged varieties: Meskhuri Sapere, Meskhuri Kharistvala (Bull's Eye Red), and Tskhenis Dzudzu Tetri (Horse Breast White), the last a white-fleshed grape included in the red blend. Six months in qvevri with full skin contact gives the wine a deep colour and a layered nose: fresh red cherry, wild berry, and dried mountain herbs. The texture is silky rather than grippy, the tannins fine and integrated, the fruit cool and bright against a finish that carries the altitude in its freshness rather than weight.

Meskhuri White (Tetri) draws on four foraged varieties: Akhaltsikhuri Tetri, Meskhuri Mtsvane, Chitiskvertskha Tetri (Bird's Egg White), and Chitistvala Tetri. Six months of skin contact in qvevri produces a gently amber, unfiltered wine. The mouthfeel is rounded and smooth, the acidity cool and sustained, the aromatic character lifted and herbaceous rather than oxidative.

Tamaris Vazi is a single-varietal wine made from a grape variety whose name connects it to Queen Tamar, the medieval Georgian monarch. Legend holds it was her favoured wine. Natenadze recovered and planted the variety as part of his broader programme of Meskhetian grape restoration. It produces a wine with fresh pomegranate and cherry on the nose, fermented in qvevri with the same extended skin contact as the blends.

Total production across all three wines does not exceed 1,200 bottles in any year.

In The Glass

Meskhuri Red opens with fresh red cherry and wild berry, with dried mountain herbs threading underneath. The fruit is cool and immediate, the nose lifted by altitude rather than warmth. In the mouth the wine is silky, the tannins fine from the six months of qvevri skin contact, the acidity bright and clean. The finish is light and herb-edged, carrying the character of undomesticated varieties fermented without oak or additions. It does not taste like Kakheti amber wine or like a conventional red; the cool elevation and the wild fruit of the recovered varieties give it a register that sits somewhere between mountain Pinot Noir and a natural orange wine, though it is neither.

Meskhuri White is amber-coloured and unfiltered, with a smooth, rounded mouthfeel and a cool, sustained acid line. The four foraged varieties give it a layered aromatic character that is herbaceous, faintly floral, and quietly complex. The long skin contact in qvevri adds texture without heaviness.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with Meskhuri Red. It is the most direct way into what Natenadze is doing: three foraged varieties from mountain forest, fermented together in qvevri for six months, finished in stainless steel with no oak and no additions. The wine is silky, cool-fruited, and herb-edged, with fresh red cherry, wild berry, and dried mountain herbs on the nose and a clean, light finish. It carries the altitude in its brightness and the wildness of the recovered grapes in its aromatic character. No other wine region produces anything quite like it, because no other winery has recovered these particular varieties from this particular mountain landscape.

Anecdote

Sometime during his years of searching the mountain forests near the Turkish border, Natenadze found a vine he could not date by any of the usual measures. The trunk was too wide, the wood too weathered, the growth pattern too ancient for anything he had seen in cultivated vineyards. He estimated it at over 400 years old. If that dating is anywhere close to accurate, the vine had been growing in the forest before the Ottoman forces arrived in Meskheti, had continued growing through the centuries-long occupation that destroyed every cultivated vineyard around it, and was still carrying fruit when he walked past it in the early 2000s. It had no name, no record, and no winery to deliver its grapes to. He took cuttings.

Final Word

Natenadze's wines are the product of a single unusual act: going to look for what had been lost. The Meskheti highlands had the geology, the altitude, and the history for serious viticulture. They had been without a working winery for four centuries. The 1,200 bottles he produces each year are the first evidence in living memory of what those mountains can make when the right varieties are found, fermented in clay, and left to speak for themselves.

Sources

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