Baia’s Wine

The country of Georgia is now considered the birthplace of wine as recently unearthed wine making artifacts are more than 8,000 years old — these are the oldest wine making remains in the world! And culturally speaking, specific regions within Georgia such as Kakheti, Kartli, Imereti, Racha-Lechkhumi, Svaneti and Abkhazia are famous wine making places; legends and recorded history document centuries of continual wine making. Vessels discovered in the Anaklia region have proven Georgians were making wine in the Neolithic era in a manner that would be familiar even today.

Vino culture has been connected with the spread of Christianity in Georgia as well: St. Nino tied vine branches with her own hair to show the cross and preach Christianity to Georgians in the fourth century — to this day the top bar of the Georgian cross is slightly bent as a wine branch was the first time Georgian’s witnessed the cross. There are about 450 unique vine varieties in Georgia and most of these would not be familiar to western palettes. Unfortunately, during the Soviet period when winemakers focused on massive production, some rare varieties that needed special care were abandoned and are now mostly extinct.

After the fall of communism in Georgia, many winemakers in the country started a retrospective of wine grapes and wine making techniques that had made Georgia so unique in the winemaking world to begin with. In 2013, a couple of maverick Georgian winemakers such as Baia Abuladze and her sister Gvantsa started to rediscover the rarest species of wine grapes in Western Georgia and to focus on bio wine making techniques. The re-discovery process continues until today: Baia Abuladze, together with her winemaking family, stands among those Georgian winemakers who work to identify and classify local vine varieties.