Vazisubani Estate
At A Glance
- **Country:** Georgia
- **Region:** Kakheti
- **Sub-region:** Alazani Valley
- **Winemaker:** Lado Uzunashvili (11th generation)
- **Vineyard:** 35 hectares
- **Key varieties:** Kisi, Rkatsiteli, Saperavi (plus two further indigenous varieties)
- **Methods:** Qvevri (buried terracotta, 9 months skin contact) and European-style stainless steel
- **Signature bottles:** 3 Qvevri, Kisi Qvevri, Saperavi Qvevri
The Producer
Vazisubani Estate sits in the Alazani Valley, in Kakheti, the wide basin in eastern Georgia where the Caucasus foothills flatten into river plain and the country's oldest wine culture has its densest roots. The estate farms 35 hectares of indigenous Georgian varieties and runs two production streams from the same ground: a qvevri cellar where wines ferment on skins in buried terracotta for months, and stainless-steel tanks producing European-style whites.
The winemaker is Lado Uzunashvili. He is the 11th generation of his family to make wine at Vazisubani, which gives that number a weight that goes beyond biography. Eleven generations is not a marketing interval. It is a chain of planting and harvest decisions that stretches back through Georgian history, through Soviet collectivisation, through the post-independence years, all arriving in the hands of one person holding an enology degree from Moscow All-Union Food Industry University and a period of practical work at Australia's Wine Research Institute.
Side by side, those credentials are the portrait: a man trained at the centre of Soviet food science, then retrained in one of the world's most technically modern wine cultures, who came back to Kakheti and buried clay pots in the ground the way his family always had.
Place
Kakheti is Georgia's principal wine region, running east from the capital Tbilisi toward the Alazani River, with the Greater Caucasus range to the north and the Lesser Caucasus framing the south. The Alazani Valley, where Vazisubani's vineyards lie, is broad, flat, and warm in summer, with a continental climate that delivers long, dry autumns. Those autumns matter: they allow the indigenous varieties, particularly Saperavi and the white Rkatsiteli and Kisi, to ripen slowly and accumulate both sugar and acidity rather than burning through one at the expense of the other.
For amber wines made in qvevri, that acidity supports the wine. Skin contact over months adds tannin, colour, and textural weight. Without a firm acid line underneath, the wine would feel heavy and oxidative. The Alazani Valley's long growing season keeps that line in place.
Soil And Site
The Alazani Valley floor is alluvial, laid down by millennia of river deposits from the Caucasus glaciers above. Vazisubani's 35 hectares sit on that river-plain geology: moderate drainage, mineral-bearing subsoils, and enough clay content to hold water through the driest summer months without stress. The flatness of the terrain means the estate is not farming a slope with dramatic solar exposure or sharp diurnal swing, but the altitude of the valley itself, several hundred metres above sea level, contributes to cool nights that protect freshness in both the white and amber wines.
Story
The estate entered a long decline that lasted 13 years. By 2013, Lado Uzunashvili had returned and begun the work of restoring it. What that restoration meant in practice was both technical and cultural: restarting qvevri production alongside the steel-tank line, rebuilding the range around the indigenous varieties the estate had always grown, and positioning Vazisubani as a producer capable of reaching international wine conversation rather than local supply alone.
The Moscow degree gave Uzunashvili classical wine-science grounding. The Australian period gave him exposure to what a new-world cellar does with indigenous and obscure varieties when it applies modern methodology without apology. He brought both back. The current dual-method cellar operates in both modes: not a rejection of either tradition but a deliberate choice to operate in both, letting the method dictate the wine's character rather than the other way around.
Vineyards And Cellar
All 35 hectares are planted to indigenous Georgian varieties. Kisi, Rkatsiteli, and Saperavi are the confirmed anchors, with two further indigenous varieties making up the balance. Kisi is a white grape with naturally high acidity and a tendency toward aromatic complexity when given extended skin contact. Rkatsiteli, the most widely planted white in Georgia, contributes firmness and a dry, mineral backbone. Saperavi is the red, a thick-skinned grape that produces wines of deep colour, firm tannin, and high acidity, which is why it ages so well in qvevri.
The qvevri cellar is where the estate's most distinctive wines are made. Qvevri are large terracotta vessels, typically sealed with beeswax, buried in the ground so that the surrounding earth holds the temperature stable through fermentation and ageing. Vazisubani ferments the white and amber wines in qvevri on their skins for approximately 9 months. That contact extracts phenolics, colour compounds, and textural tannin from the grape skins, shifting the wine from the thin, neutral register of a quick-pressed white into amber territory: deeper in colour, more chewy in texture, with aromatic complexity that reads dried fruit, spice, and tea rather than fresh citrus.
The stainless-steel stream produces conventional European-style whites from the same varieties, without skin contact or extended vessel ageing. These wines are fresher, lighter, and quicker to market. The two streams coexist, drawing from the same vineyard, taking different paths to the bottle.
Wines
The range divides between qvevri-method bottles and European-style stainless-steel whites, with the qvevri tier carrying the estate's main statement.
The Kisi Qvevri is an amber wine made from the Kisi grape with approximately 9 months of skin contact in buried terracotta. It comes out with dried fruit, honeycomb, and baking spice on the nose, and a textured, tannin-framed body that is not sweet despite the honeyed aromas. Kisi's natural acidity keeps the wine from feeling heavy.
The Rkatsiteli Qvevri follows the same method with a different grape. Rkatsiteli contributes more mineral austerity and a drier finish than Kisi. Where Kisi tends toward warmth and dried fruit, Rkatsiteli in qvevri typically produces a firmer, less immediately giving amber wine.
The 3 Qvevri is a blended amber wine from three indigenous white varieties fermented together in qvevri. It sits at the intersection of the estate's different grape characters and gives a wider tasting frame than the single-variety bottles.
The Saperavi Qvevri is the red. Saperavi is one of few grape varieties in the world where both the skin and the juice are deeply coloured, and qvevri fermentation with extended skin contact amplifies the grape's natural richness. The wine is full-bodied and firmly tannic, with the depth the estate describes as suited to ageing.
The stainless-steel whites from the same vineyard are in the range but are not the primary focus of the estate. They offer a conventional entry point for anyone not yet oriented to the qvevri style.
In The Glass
Across the qvevri tier, a shared set of characters runs through the wines regardless of grape. Amber colour, deeper than a white and lighter than a rosé. Dried fruit on the nose rather than fresh, because long skin contact oxidises the surface aromatic compounds slowly and concentrates what remains. Textural tannin from the skins, grippy enough to feel in the mouth but not harsh enough to dominate. And underneath all of it, a thread of natural acidity that keeps the finish alive and the wine from feeling flat.
The 2020 3 Qvevri is a specific illustration. The nose opens with green tea, dried apricot, dried pineapple, honey, citrus, and a layer of subtle spice. The palate delivers apricot, honey, apple, green tea, lemon drop, and spice across a medium body, with mouth-watering acidity giving the wine more energy than its weight suggests. Nothing here reads like a conventional white. Nothing reads like a conventional red. It is a category of its own.
The Saperavi Qvevri moves in a different direction entirely: rich, full-bodied, with the dark fruit and firm tannin that Saperavi always brings, amplified by qvevri ageing into something dense and slow-developing.
A Bottle To Understand It
Start with the 2020 Vazisubani Estate 3 Qvevri. It is a blended amber wine from three indigenous white varieties fermented in buried terracotta for 9 months on their skins. The colour is pale amber. The nose is green tea, dried apricot, honey, and a thin line of citrus. In the mouth the acidity is mouth-watering, the body is medium, and the layered flavour moves through apricot, apple, lemon, and spice before finishing clean and long. It does not taste like any European white or red, because it is neither. It is a Georgian amber wine made by a method older than most wine regions.
Pour it with roast poultry, hard cheese, walnuts, or anything where a conventional white would be too light and a red would be too heavy. It fits that gap.
Anecdote
Sometime during his time at Australia's Wine Research Institute, Lado Uzunashvili sat down with the Australian winemaker Hugh Hamilton and introduced him to Saperavi. Hamilton had likely tasted plenty of unfamiliar grape varieties in the course of his career, but Saperavi is not a grape that turns up in Australian tasting rooms. Thick-skinned, deeply coloured in both juice and skin, Georgian in origin and almost entirely unknown outside the former Soviet sphere, it was a variety with no reference point for an Australian winemaker. Uzunashvili, trained in Moscow and standing in one of the world's most technically modern wine environments, was the 11th-generation custodian of a grape his family had grown in Kakheti for centuries. That introduction crossed several kinds of distance at once: between old and new world, between ancestral and industrial knowledge, between a country most wine buyers could not find on a map and a country that had been rewriting wine culture for decades. Uzunashvili went back to Kakheti. Hamilton kept the encounter.
Final Word
Vazisubani Estate presents Georgian amber wine through two things operating at once: a method that is genuinely ancient (terracotta, skin contact, months underground) and a winemaker who trained across two of the most technically demanding wine educations available. The bottles taste like nothing from France or Italy or Spain, and taste entirely like where they are from.