From the atlas
Twins Wine House in Napareuli
At A Glance
Winery: Twins Wine House in Napareuli Founders: Gia and Gela Gamtkitsulashvili Village: Napareuli, Telavi district Region: Kakheti, Georgia Grapes: Khikhvi, Saperavi, Kisi, Kakhuri Green, and other indigenous varieties Production: 250,000 litres per year, 15 hectares, 135 qvevri First bottle: Khikhvi Qvevri
The Producer
In 1994, twin brothers Gia and Gela Gamtkitsulashvili restored their grandfather's buried clay cellar in the Kakheti village of Napareuli and bottled a Qvevri wine commercially, the first time this had been done in modern Georgia. There was no amber wine category then, no international market for skin-contact whites, and no UNESCO recognition of qvevri as intangible heritage. The brothers labelled the bottles and sent them out anyway.
Formal commercial production followed in 1997. The winery now operates 135 buried clay qvevri, the smallest holding 50 litres and the largest 5 tons, across a 15-hectare holding where three hectares are farmed organically. Annual production reaches 250,000 litres. Wines export to Japan, Germany, England and China.
The estate includes a Qvevri and Qvevri Wine Museum where an 8-metre clay vessel, one of the largest in existence, sits buried in the ground. It had to be fired and buried before the museum building could be constructed around it, because a vessel that size cannot be moved once made.
Place
Napareuli sits in the Telavi district of Kakheti, Georgia's principal wine region, on the left bank of the Alazani river valley. Kakheti stretches from the eastern slopes of the Greater Caucasus down toward the valley floor, with the Alazani marking the boundary between the vine-planted hillsides and the wider agricultural plain.
The left-bank position gives Napareuli a relatively continental climate: warm, dry summers with significant diurnal temperature variation and cold winters. That swing between daytime heat and cool nights is central to Khikhvi's character. The grape ripens fully under the summer sun but retains the acidity and aromatic lift that give the finished wine its lemongrass and citrus register. Kakheti as a whole accounts for the majority of Georgian wine production and has been the centre of qvevri winemaking culture for several thousand years.
Soil And Site
The vineyards in this part of the Alazani valley sit on alluvial and loam-based soils, fed by seasonal runoff from the Caucasus foothills. The valley floor and lower slopes provide good water retention through dry summers, an important factor given the relatively low annual rainfall of eastern Georgia.
The 8-metre qvevri in the estate museum gives a physical measure of what the tradition involves. Clay vessels at this scale are fired in dedicated kilns and buried to their necks in the cellar floor, where the surrounding earth maintains a stable, cool temperature through the fermentation and ageing months. The insulation of the ground replaces the temperature control of a modern cellar. Once sealed with beeswax after filling, a qvevri holds the wine, the skins and the stems in direct contact for the full ageing period.
Story
Qvevri winemaking had been practised in Georgia for roughly 4,000 years before the Soviet era dismantled the individual cellar economy. By the 1980s, state-run factories dominated Georgian wine production and private qvevri cellars had retreated almost entirely from commercial view. When the Soviet Union collapsed, what remained were family cellars used for personal use, not labelled bottles for sale.
Gia and Gela inherited their ancestor's cellar and faced the question of what to do with it. Restoring the buried vessels and making wine for the family was one option. Bottling it commercially was another, and in 1994 they chose the second. They labelled and sold what became Georgia's first commercially bottled Qvevri wine in the modern era, before the category had a name in international wine journalism and before Georgia's natural wine reputation had formed abroad.
By 1997, formal commercial production was underway. Over the following decade, Twins Wine House grew into one of the visible representatives of the qvevri method at a time when European and Asian buyers were beginning to seek it out. The museum followed, built around the giant vessel rather than the other way around, and the winery's exports reached four continents.
Vineyards And Cellar
The 15-hectare holding is planted exclusively to indigenous Georgian varieties. Three hectares are farmed under organic and bio certification. The main grapes are Saperavi for the red range and Khikhvi, Kisi and Kakhuri Green for the white and amber lines. The variety named Napareuli after the village is also grown on the property.
In the Qvevri line, harvested grapes go into the buried clay vessels whole, with skins and sometimes stems. Fermentation begins naturally with ambient yeasts. The wine and its solids remain sealed inside the vessel, with beeswax applied to the rim, for up to six months. The surrounding earth holds the temperature between 14 and 16 degrees Celsius throughout. After ageing, the wine is pressed off the skins, clarified, and bottled without filtration.
The European line bypasses the extended skin contact and uses stainless steel or oak barrels instead. The two production streams run in parallel and represent different answers to what Kakheti grapes can do: one ancient and textural, the other conventional and fruit-forward.
Wines
The range divides clearly into Qvevri and European-style bottlings. The Qvevri wines are amber and red wines made by the traditional skin-contact method; the European-style wines are white, rosé and red made by conventional temperature-controlled fermentation with or without barrel ageing.
Khikhvi Qvevri is the central bottle in the amber range. Khikhvi is a rare indigenous white grape from Kakheti that, after six months of skin contact in underground clay, produces a wine with tannins more typical of a medium-weight red than a white. The colour runs from deep gold to amber. Aroma moves between lemongrass, honey, herbal tea, apple and citrus. Tannin is firm and drying across the palate, supported by enough fruit concentration to carry it. The 2018 vintage layers oak, dried prune and spice on top of the base fruit, with a warm, velvety finish.
Kisi and Kakhuri Green follow a similar method, each expressing its own aromatic register through the same clay and skin-contact process. Saperavi is the main red, produced in both Qvevri and European styles. The winery also produces chacha, a grape-marc spirit distilled from the pressed skins after wine production, and brandy.
In The Glass
Khikhvi Qvevri opens with lemongrass, honey and herbal tea on the nose, with citrus and apple underneath. The six months of skin contact in clay has extracted tannin and colour from the grape skins, so what arrives on the palate is dry and grippy where a conventionally made Khikhvi would be softer and more aromatic. The tannin is firm but not harsh; it runs from the mid-palate through a long, warm finish. There is no residual sweetness. The texture is closer to a light Saperavi red than to most white wines from the same latitude.
The 2018 vintage shows an additional layer: oak and dried fruit on the aroma, alongside the characteristic lemongrass and honey. On the palate, the tannins round out slightly compared to younger releases, with a velvety quality and a spiced, warming finish.
The Saperavi qvevri carries Kakheti's characteristic dark fruit, firm tannin and deep colour, with the clay fermentation adding an earthy, mineral quality absent from the European-style version of the same grape.
A Bottle To Understand It
Start with Khikhvi Qvevri. Khikhvi is a white Kakheti grape that most drinkers will not have encountered before, and the qvevri method transforms it into something that defies the usual white-wine expectations. Six months of skin contact in buried clay produces a deep amber wine with firm, drying tannins, lemongrass and honey aromatics, and a long spiced finish. No residual sweetness, no oak character in the base style. Khikhvi Qvevri shows lemongrass, honey, herbal tea, citrus and apple, with a dry finish.
Anecdote
In 1994, Gia and Gela Gamtkitsulashvili dug back into their ancestor's cellar in Napareuli and found the buried qvevri vessels still intact. Qvevri winemaking had been practised in Georgia for millennia, but the Soviet system had pushed commercial wine production into state factories, and the old family cellars had stopped bottling for sale long before. The brothers fermented a batch of Khikhvi on its skins in the clay, sealed the vessels with beeswax, and waited six months. When the wine came off the skins, they bottled it, labelled it and sold it. There was no established Georgian amber wine category to place it in, no international press covering qvevri, and no price premium attached to the method. What they produced was simply the first commercially bottled Qvevri wine in modern Georgia, and the cellar that now holds 135 vessels and exports to four continents began with that single batch.
Final Word
Twins Wine House in Napareuli occupies a specific and unusual position in Georgian wine: a family operation that revived commercial qvevri bottling before the method had an international following, built steadily into a substantial producer, and kept the traditional and European production streams running side by side. Khikhvi Qvevri is the bottle that carries the full argument, a white grape transformed by ancient method into something with the weight and grip of a red, and the aromatic register of the Kakheti hillside where it was grown.
Sources
- https://twinswinehouse.com/en/winery/ghvinis-shesakheb
- https://wineland.ge/twins-wine-house
- https://places.georgia.travel/en/establishments/twin-wine-house
- https://silkroadwines.com/product/khikhvi/
- https://winestyleonline.com/products/Twins-Wine-Cellar-in-Napareuli-Khikhvi-2018.html