Mtsvane Kakhuri - Kakheti, Georgia

Despite the fact that many of my first posts on this blog featured wines from the nation of Georgia, I haven't written a post featuring a Georgian grape in almost two years.  The reason is pretty simple: I really haven't been able to find many new wines made from interesting grapes in awhile.  I've had a few Georgian wines in my cellar for awhile now, but many of them were sweet red wines, which has never been my favorite thing, so I've put off opening them for quite some time.  I have recently gotten around to trying them, though, so posts on those wines will be coming up.  In the meantime, though, I also was able to find a bottle of wine made completely from the Mtsvane grape, which we've seen before, but never in a starring role.  It turns out that Mtsvane is more complicated than I had thought when I wrote about it before, so hopefully we get can to the bottom of it here today.

In my prior two posts featuring wines with a splash of Mtsvane, I was under the impression that there was a single Mtsvane grape and that the references to Mtsvane in each of the two wines were references to that grape.  It turns out that there are many grapes with the word Mtsvane in their names because in Georgian, Mtsvane just means "green."  Many grapes are called Mtsvane Something, and typically the Something part of the name has to do with where the grape is from (or thought to be from).  Mtsvane Goruli (or Goruli Mtsvane) means "green from Gori," which is a town in the Kartli region in the Caucasus mountains of south-central Georgia.  This is the grape that was used in the Bagrationi sparkling wine that I wrote about in 2011.  Today's grape is called Mtsvane Kakhuri, which means "green from Kakheti" since it is thought to be native to the Kakheti region of Georgia. This is the grape that was also in the Tsinandali wine I wrote about way back in 2010.  Confusingly, both grapes are generally known and generally labeled merely as Mtsvane so to figure out which one you're dealing with, you have to know where in Georgia your wine is from.

There are many other Mtsvane Something vines (the VIVC has around a dozen listed), but Goruli and Kakhuri are the most common.  Of those two, Kakhuri is more widely planted with nearly 600 acres devoted to it as of 2004.  Mtsvane Kakhuri is also grown to some extent in Armenia, Moldova, Russia and the Ukraine, but not really anywhere else.  Georgia's wine making history is thought to be older than any other country's, and many grapes currently grown there are said to have very ancient roots, but these claims are often difficult to back up.  Nearly all of the evidence for early wine making is archaeological and it gives little idea as to exactly what grapes may have been used for those ancient wines.  Further, as we've noted above, names like Mtsvane are very common and it is unclear which Mtsvane may be referenced when there are are textual sources available.  Finally, Georgia has had a complicated relationship with Russia throughout its history and was stuck behind the Iron Curtain for much of the 20th Century.  This relationship may have corrupted or destroyed some records as well.

The wine that I was able to try was the NV (though it was possibly from 2009, according to a comment below from the wine's importer) Telavi Wine Cellar "Marani" Mtsvane from the Kakheti region of Georgia.  This bottle set me back about $12.  In the glass the wine was a silvery lemon color.  The nose was somewhat reserved with aromas of apricot, pear, and green apple with a weird chemical or metallic kind of smell.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly low to low acidity. There were broad flavors of pear, golden apple, white peach and lemon peel/lemon water.  The flavors were pretty washed out and when you coupled that with the fairly low acidity, you end up with a wine that's not a whole lot of fun to drink.  While there are a lot of good wines coming out of Georgia, there's still also a lot of lackluster and sometimes straight up bad wines coming out as well and it's difficult to know what you're getting yourself into when you're trying something new.  This isn't a bad wine, but merely an average one that I have a hard time imagining a place for at my table or in my cellar.

Odds and Ends - Sparkling Malbec, Botrytized Rkatsiteli, White Pinot Noir, Rufete Rosado and Pignoletto Redux

Today I'd like to introduce a new erratic feature where I provide a few tasting notes for some unusual wines that I've come across lately that I either don't want to write a whole post about or which feature grapes that I've already written a full post about and just don't want to fully revisit.  The former group mostly features wines made from common grapes but made in unusual styles and while I enjoy drinking these wines, I find that I don't have much to say about them, so when I go to write a new post, I tend to skip over those entries in my tasting notebook for those featuring novel grapes.  I'm starting to accumulate quite a few notes like that, though, so I decided to unload some of them here.  I also have a tendency to buy bottles made from unusual grapes I've already covered here so that I can compare them to the wines I've previously written about.  I used to just updat those prior posts with these new tasting notes, but since new posts get more readers than old ones, I thought that those notes may be missed by many readers, so I decided to include them in this little feature as well.

The first wine I'd like to write about is the NV Domaine Augis "La Rosée" sparkling Malbec from the Valency region of the Loire Valley in France.  Though Malbec is currently the superstar grape of Argentina, its original home is France and in many French areas, including this one, the grape is known as Côt.  This is a traditional method rosé sparkler that I picked up for around $17 from my friends at the Wine Bottega.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep violet pink color with vigorous bubbles.  The nose was somewhat reserved with aromas of fresh cut strawberries and crushed raspberries.  On the palate the wine was light bodied with fairly high acidity and smooth, creamy bubbles.  There were flavors of bitter cherry, fresh strawberry, red currant and crushed red berries.  I found the wine very clean and refreshing and enjoyed it with a pan seared swordfish steak.  I think it's a tremendous value for a traditional method sparkler at less than $20 a bottle and would recommend it unreservedly.

The next wine I'd like to talk about is the 2006 Satrapezo "Gviani," which is a dessert wine made from botrytized Rkatsiteli grapes (retail around $30 for 375 mL).  I've written about Rkatsiteli many times (here and here and here), but this is the first dessert wine made from the grape that I've been able to try.  The grapes for this wine were grown on the banks of the Alazanis river in Georgia where mists and morning dew from the river combined with warm afternoon sun provide the ideal conditions for the development of botrytis cinerea, which is perhaps better known as noble rot.  This fungus infects the berries by piercing the grape's skin, causing much of the water in the berry to evaporate, leaving a dense, sticky, sugary liquid behind.  This liquid is fermented as much as possible and, in this case, aged for a short time in oak barrels prior to bottling.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly reserved with aromas of apricot, mint, orange marmalade, vanilla and pineapple.  On the palate the wine was full bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was very sweet with flavors of apricot, orange marmalade, honey, red grapefruit and peach cobbler with a clean, minty finish.  I found this wine pretty shut down at fridge temp, but much more generous and open at cellar temp.  I enjoyed this wine and thought it was a reasonable value, but it really lacked the complexity of fine Sauternes or BA/TBA wines from Germany.  Fans of botrytized wines should probably check this out, but connoisseurs may want to skip it.

Next up is the 2008 Trenz Spätburgunder Blanc de Noir from the Rheingau region of Germany, which I picked up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $18.  Spätburgunder is the German word for Pinot Noir and while German Pinot Noir certainly isn't that unusual, white wines made from the grape are.  I took a look at a Cabernet Franc wine (and a Nebbiolo wine) made using this method a few months back so readers looking for technical information on how the wine is made are referred to the Cab Franc post.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with funky, leesy aromas of candied strawberry, watermelon and candied apple.  It smelled more like a rosé than a white wine, which is what I also found in that Blanc de Franc.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was off-dry with honey, peach, candied strawberry, candied green apple and lemon curd flavors.  It was bright and zippy and walked that line between sweet and tart that the Germans are so fond of exploring.  I've had a few other Blanc de Noir style Pinot Noir table wines before, but this is definitely the best that I've ever had.

Next up is the 2008 Vina Salamanca Rufete rosado, which I also picked up from Curtis Liquors for around $13.  I wrote about the Rufete grape a few years back, but at the time, the only wine I could find containing the grape was 50% Rufete and 50% Tempranillo.  This wine is from the same producer, but is made from 100% Rufete grapes.  In the glass the wine was a light salmon pink color.  The nose was moderately intense with funky, leesy aromas of strawberry and not much else.  On the palate this wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of red cherry, fresh cut strawberry, raspberry and a touch of leesy funk.  This wine was definitely in decline a bit as it was a few years old by the time I got my hands on it, but it was still crisp, fruity and refreshing, which is all I really ask of my pink wines.  I know that there are red wines made from the Rufete grape out there, but I have been unable to track any of them down thus far.  When I finally do, you can bet that tasting note will be up on the site somewhere.

The final wine that I'd like to write about was the 2008 Branchini Pignoletto from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy (which I picked up at Panzano Proviste for around $18).  I wrote about the Pignoletto grape a few months back and took a look at two wines from Alberto Tedeschi which were very good but were hardly what you might consider traditional.  When I came across this example from Branchini, I decided to try it out to see what a regular table wine made from the grape might be like.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was somewhat reserved with ripe apple, lemon and mint aromas along with something vaguely floral.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white peach, mint and Meyer lemon with a bit of nuttiness on the finish.  The citrusy lemon notes were dominant at fridge temp, but the peachy flavors woke up and became a bit more generous as the wine warmed up.  This wine was probably a little over the hill, but it still provided an interesting counter point to the more avant garde efforts from Tedeschi.  Overall, I thought it was OK, but probably not worth the price tag.  The Tedeschi wines were much more interesting and characterful and only a few dollars more than this example, thought they're also probably more of an acquired taste.

Tsolikauri - Tvishi, Georgia

It's with something like a heavy heart that I bid a temporary farewell to the nation of Georgia and its wines. I still have a few Mukuzani wines in my cellar that I plan to drink, but today's post is likely the last one from this country for quite some time. I have exhausted the one shop where I have been able to find these wines, so, barring an unexpected discovery, this is likely it. Georgia was the first real discovery for me with this website and while they aren't exactly producing mind-blowing wines at the moment, I see a lot of potential there and will be keeping an eye out for future developments. It has been very enlightening and interesting for me to taste these wines and research the history of a region with such a great vinous legacy.

Today's wine is called Tvishi and it's made from the Tsolikauri grape. Tvishi is the name of a small village in the Rioni Gorge of the Lechkhumi province in north-central Georgia. The Rioni Gorge is formed by the Rioni river which is apparently a hot spot for white water rafters. The 1965 edition of Wines and Cognacs of Georgia describes Tvishi as "refreshing with a fruity flavour," and promises "one who has ever tasted this wine will never forget its delicate and gentle bouquet and inimitable harmonious taste." I'm still not sure what the numbering convention means in this book, but for what it's worth, Tvishi is listed as No. 19.

Tsolikauri is widely planted throughout Georgia, accounting for an estimated 90% of plantings in Western Georgia. It is used in the production of still dry and semi-sweet wines and is also used for distillation into spirits. According to Russian statesman Vyacheslav Molotov (of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, AKA the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact enacted in 1939), Tsolikauri was a favorite of Joseph Stalin, who was himself born in Gori, Georgia (which is located between Tvishi and the capital city of Georgia, Tbilisi). The bottling I was able to find was a Marani (Telavi Wine Cellars) from 2008 which set me back $16. Marani is actually a Georgian word that refers to the room where the large buried clay jars (called kvevri) used in traditional Georgian wine making are located. Telavi Wine Cellars is a thoroughly modern operation (though their website seems to have not been updated since the 2003 vintage) that does not vinify their wines in the traditional way, and my guess is that this was vinified in stainless steel.

In the glass, this was a pale lemon color with hints of green. The nose was interesting with honeydew melon and white flower aromas. On the palate, the wine was medium bodied and semi-sweet with medium acidity. There were ripe flavors of apricot, honeysuckle and a bit of ruby-red grapefruit juice. It is really dominated by stone fruit and floral flavors, though, and there is just the faintest hint of citrus. This was much more balanced than some of the semi-sweet Rkatsiteli wines that I tried and is probably the most well-integrated white wine that I've had from Georgia. The sweetness was nicely counterbalanced by the acidity so that this never tasted cloying or treacly. Think fleshy off-dry Riesling with the acidity dialed back a bit and you'd be in the ballpark here. This could certainly work as a dessert wine, but it would also be nice with light, spicy foods as well.

Georgian Sparkling Wine - Bagrationi 1882 Brut

The former Soviet republic of Georgia is no stranger to this blog. In the course of writing this blog, Georgia is definitely the nation I've gained the most new knowledge about, accounting for about 25% of my total posts so far. I've gone into some of the history of the region in previous posts and people curious about that aspect should consult the posts linked above or in the sidebar to the right.

While Georgia's wine history goes back several thousand years, its sparkling wine industry is a fairly new phenomenon, going back about 130 years. Ivan Bagrationi-Mukraneli, born in 1812, was a member of the Georgian Royal Family who took up agriculture in 1881 (after a stint in the military) and focused on improving the farmlands around the royal estate. He recognized the lack of a serious sparkling wine industry in his home country that could compete with the Champagnes and other sparkling wines of Europe and set as his task the creation of an original sparkling wine made from native Georgian varietals. His initial efforts were made from Chinuri (also known as Chinebuli), Goruli Mtsvane (or just Mtsvane), Tsitska and Tsolikouri and were met with almost immediate success. In 1882, his sparkling wine won The National Emblem, the highest possible prize, at the Moscow International Exhibition. This achievement is reflected in the name of the current company, Bagrationi 1882.

As with most things concerning Georgia, Russia has been a major factor in the success or failure of Georgian wines. In 1937, during the Soviet occupation, a company was set up in Georgia called Tbilisi Factory (ugh) of Champagne which was responsible for satisfying 15% of the Soviet demand for sparkling wines. In the 1980's, Georgian production peaked at around 24 million bottles under the brand name Soviet Champagne. The 2005 Soviet embargo on Georgian wines had a devastating effect on the local market since about two-thirds of the Georgian production was consigned to Russia, forcing the wineries to look abroad for other markets. Bagrationi 1882, thus far, has been the only Georgian sparkling wine maker to land on American shores (and they only landed here in 2009, I believe). They have a wide range of products one can peruse here.

The bottle I picked up was the NV Brut which is made from Chinebuli, Tsitska and Mtsvane grapes and retails for about $15. In the glass the wine had a pale straw color with steady, vigorous bubbles. The nose was a bit reserved with some ripe apple and pear. It lacked the typical yeasty smells of bread and toast, which made me think that this probably wasn't made with the methode Champenois, and a little bit of research confirmed that suspicion. While some of the higher end bottlings from Bagrationi do use the traditional method, this bottling and most of their lower end bottlings use the Charmat method, also known as the metodo Italiano (so called because this is the method used to make Prosecco). In this process, the wine undergoes its secondary fermentation in stainless steel tanks rather than in the bottle which limits the wine's contact with the lees and thus prevents those secondary bready aromas.

In the mouth, the wine was full bodied with high, crisp acidity. It was definitely dry with tight, steady bubble structure. There was a little bit of green apple flavor and maybe a touch of lemon-lime citrus, but overall, there wasn't much fruit here. There was a little bit of toastiness on the palate. To me, this was somewhere between a Prosecco and a Champagne. It's certainly not a substitute for Champagne, but it definitely has its place as an aperitif or as a nice palate cleanser for light hors d'oeuvres.

Tbilisuri - Medium Dry Rkatsiteli

This is the last article on rkatsiteli this year. Early next year, I'll be discussing a very interesting version from New Jersey, but until then, there will be a few posts concerning other varietals from other corners of the world.

This bottle has me a bit vexed. I can't really find any good information about this particular style. It isn't mentioned at all in Wines and Cognacs of Georgia and the brief blurb about it on Wikipedia is not helpful in the least. According to Wikipedia, Tbilisuri is a semi-dry pink wine made from saperavi, cabernet sauvignon and rkatsiteli. I can certainly tell you that that description is way off in describing the bottle I tried (pictured at left: the Marani/Telavi Wine Cellars offering, NV). My bottling was, I believe, 100% rkatsiteli and was definitely a white wine. I bought it for $10 at Bazaar in Brookline, which is where I go for most of my Georgian wine needs. My best guess is that Tbilisuri indicates that the wine is made somewhere around the Georgia capital of Tbilisi, but aside from that, I really don't have a lot of information on this bottle.

In the glass it had a yellow straw color that was closing in on gold with a full glass. The nose was a little shy, as many of these Georgian examples have been. I picked up on some green melon and lemon cream aromas, but they weren't exactly jumping out of the glass. On the palate, the wine is medium bodied and semi-sweet. The most glaring defect of the wine is apparent as soon as the wine hits your tongue: the acid is shockingly low here. Rkatsiteli tends to be a pretty high-acid grape, but in this bottle, it's almost completely absent. This is a big drawback in a wine with some sweetness to it, as the sugar just overwhelms the palate and the wine feels big and clunky in the mouth. The major reason that grapes like chenin blanc and riesling can take a bit of residual sugar is that the wine has a nice acid streak to keep it in balance. Acid in white wine is akin to tannin in a red wine; it's the structure that the other flavors really hang onto.

It's a shame, too, as the palate was layered and complex. There were flavors of orange cream, canteloupe, honeysuckle, candied lemon peel, white peach and mandarin orange wedges. It had a lingering finish composed mostly of canned mandarin oranges. I'm undecided about whether that's a good thing or not. I couldn't finish the bottle, though, as the lack of balance was so pronounced. If you don't mind drinking syrup straight out of the bottle, this wine might be for you, but otherwise, I'd give it a fairly wide berth and try one of the many other versions of rkatsiteli available.

Tsinandali - Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane

Next stop on my little tour of Rkatsiteli is the little region of Tsinandali in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. From a cultural perspective, Tsinandali is best known as the home of the poet Alexander Chavchavadze. I'm not familiar with the man's work, but he is apparently something of a big deal in Georgia literature. More to the point here, Alexander had a winery on his estate which, if I'm reading the wikipedia article correctly, was called Marani. There is still a winery by this name, but a bit of digging leads me to believe that it's not the same. Georgia wineries seem to go by more than one name a lot of the time and I believe what's labeled as Marani wine these days is perhaps better known as Telavi Wine Cellar. It seems that perhaps the old winery on the Chavchavadze estate is being converted into a museum which sounds pretty cool (that's the estate in the picture to the left).

According to Wines and Cognacs of Georgia, Tsinandali has been "manufactured" since 1892. They go on to say that the "European" method is used in the production of Tsinandali, as opposed to the Khakhetian method or Imeretian method, where the wine is fermented in large clay jars buried in the ground. The blend consists of rkatsiteli and mtsvane grapes which are harvested, sorted, destemmed, pressed, fermented in temperature controlled tanks, clarified and matured in oak casks for 2-3 years, though this last part seems to be pretty variable (of the two Tsinandalis I tasted, only one specified the amount of time in oak: 9 months...neither bottle specified whether it was new or neutral oak, but more on that below).

I had two bottles of Tsinandali to sample. The first was a 2007 vintage from JS Corporation (Corporation Kindzmarauli?) which retailed for $12. The second was a 2006 vintage from Alaverdi for $9. There seems to be more than one company called Alaverdi in Georgia (at least three and possibly four), and mine was made from this company. As a side note, almost all of the Georgian winery websites are just awful to try and navigate. Click on the link above and just try to get somewhere. Only one of the links on the opening page actually works, and that's the Home link. Once you click on that, it takes you to a page where you can navigate the rest of the site.

So, the wines. The JS Corporation Tsinandali was a pale straw color with a pretty reserved nose. There was a bit of melon and vanilla, but not much else. On the palate the wine was clean and neutral tasting with very little fruit, which seems to be a hallmark of Georgian Tsinandali. The Alaverdi bottling had a blurb on the back which touted the "thin fruit taste." What fruit there is is mostly diluted lemon and lemon peel. As the wine came down to room temperature, the lemon flavors started to jump out a little more and a faint melon flavor showed up. It was medium bodied with pretty good acidity. If this actually spent nine months in oak, there's no way it was new oak. My guess is that this is mostly neutral oak casks or at the most a few batches see some new oak and those batches are blended into the final product.

The Alaverdi Tsinandali had the same pale color with some silvery undertones to it. The nose was much more lively with an herbal characteristic. There were a lot of green melon and lime peel aromas as well. This wine had a little bit more heft to it than the JSC wine and also carried the characteristic rkatsiteli acidity. The fruit on the palate were was light with lemon leading the way backed up by some nice, round honeydew melon flavors. The finish was crisp and clean. Not a lingering finish, but just the kind of thing you're looking for with shellfish, either raw or cooked. Again, the back of this bottle touted their use of oak, but there's just no way that new oak was used here in any great quantity. The one caveat about this wine: if you buy it, drink it all the day you open the cork or just pour it out when you're finished for the day. This was abysmally bad the next day.

For less than $15, the Georgian Tsinandalis were very interesting and certainly have their place at the table. Both were very clean and crisp on the palate but had enough body to them to possibly stand up to lighter chicken dishes. This certainly wouldn't be out of place as an aperitif, either. Of the two, the Alaverdi was more interesting and represents a better value. I will certainly be looking to have a few of these on hand once summer rolls around again.

Rkatsiteli - Alazanis Valley, Georgia

The Alazani Valley is formed along the Alazani River in the Khaketi region of Georgia. The river forms in the Caucasus mountains and forms part of the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan before it empties into the latter country. This valley seems to be the focal point of the Georgian wine industry with towns like Tsinandali and Akhasheni located there.

As mentioned previously on this website, they've been making wine in Georgia for a very very long time and for a big portion of their long winemaking history, they've been making wine from rkatsiteli grapes. There is archaeological evidence of rkatsiteli seeds dating back to 3000 BC.

You may be asking yourself at this point "since the wine history goes back so far here, why is it that I've never heard of a lot of these grapes and wines?" The short answer is: the Cold War. The longer answer involves a history of occupation by foreign powers. Georgia's location at the crossroads between Europe and Asia made it a popular target and the country has been under the rule of the Mongols, the ancient Persians, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the modern state of Russia. Whenever the nation of Georgia appears in the news these days, it's usually because of their ongoing conflict with Russia, who still occupies a good deal of land in the center of the country.

The most disastrous of these occupations as far as the Georgian wine industry is concerned was the Soviet occupation. Behind the Iron Curtain, most of the production from Georgia was controlled by the Soviet Union and produced for consumption within Soviet borders. In the 1965 book Wines and Cognacs of Georgia, the emphasis is clearly on gross production numbers rather than on quality. You get quotes like: "It was after the advent of Soviet power that wine-growing in Georgia began to develop on a planned, industrial basis." To any quality wine lover, the word "industrial" sends a shiver down the spine.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was still the biggest importer of Georgian wines and very few of them were exported to the United States. The former Soviet bloc area was still Georgia's primary market. That all changed in 2006, however, when Russia instituted an embargo on Georgian wine due to allegations of counterfeiting labels. The issue is a complex one that goes beyond the scope of this piece, but the primary result is that Georgia's major source of wine exports dried up virtually overnight and they have been looking to expand into newer markets recently. A few bottles are starting to show up outside of Eastern European specialty stores around Boston, but the widest selections are still in these specialty markets.

So, all that as a prelude to this bottling. The label says Alizanis Valley, though this is clearly the Alazani Valley mentioned above. It seems that wines made with the regional distinction "Alizani(s) Valley" are a relatively recent phenomenon, first being produced in 1977. My guess is that this wine is akin to buying a French bottle simply marked "Burgundy." The grapes are probably sourced throughout the valley rather than in very specific sites as the rest of Georgian wine seems to be. I believe this bottling is 100% rkatsiteli, though other producers do seem to mix in a few other white varietals as well.

The producer is the JS Corporation, which may also go by the name Coporation Kindzmarauli. It's hard to say, honestly. In any case, the label to the left is the label on my bottle, and this company seems to be the most heavily represented in many of the wine shops I've been to. The price tag on this bottle was $12 and the vintage was 2007. I should note that there are two wines from this producer labeled Alazanis Valley. One is white and made from Rkatsiteli grapes while the other is red and made from Saperavi grapes. The bottle color should be a dead giveaway for those of you shopping for this, but do double check the label very closely, as they are virtually identical (in fact, as I was writing this, I double checked the image, and sure enough, this is the red label...I can't seem to find the white one online anywhere and have already discarded by bottle).

In the glass, this has a pale yellowish straw color. The nose is a bit reserved with lemon peel being the dominant note. The wine is off-dry, which brings up another point about Georgian wines. They have a lot of ways to indicate that the wine is kind of sweet, and I'm not sure i they are standardized at all. I've seen semi-dry, semi-sweet, medium-dry, medium-sweet and sweet all on different bottles. This one says semi-sweet, but to my taste, this was semi-sweet like a Riesling or a Vouvray with a little residual sugar in it. This is definitely not a dessert wine.

The wine has a medium body on the palate and probably medium plus acidity. It's nowhere near as racy as the Westport Rivers offering. The wine is floral in the mouth with more stone fruit flavors like apricots and white peaches. There isn't quite so much zippy citrus in this wine. The finish isn't particularly complex or lingering, but has a minerally edge that feels nice and clean. For comparison's sake, Riesling is really the obvious parallel here, though this lacks the acidic structure of a fine Riesling. This wine is probably very similar to Riesling, though, in its ability to match up with food. This would be particularly nice with spicy foods, as the residual sugar would be most welcome to a scorched mouth. I find that on the whole, I have a better tolerance for the semi-sweet white wines than reds and have been focusing on them more lately. There's another semi-sweet rkatsiteli wine from Georgia that I'll write about very soon, though up next will be a comparison of two different dry wines from Tsinandali.

Kindzmarauli - Semi-Sweet Saperavi

For this week's wine, I decided to revisit the nation of Georgia, home of the Mukuzani wine that I enjoyed so much before. What I found when researching Mukuzani is that the overwhelming majority of wines being produced in Georgia were actually semi-sweet, rather than dry. Interestingly, there are more semi-sweet red/pink wines than white wines, as you can read on the Georgian Wine Wikipedia entry. Of the sixteen red/pink wines given descriptions on that page, only two reds are dry, while of the seventeen white wines, nine are dry.

I will confess that I'm not sure how authoritative the Wikipedia page is, but at the moment, it's really the only resource I have for Georgian wine. As far as I can tell, there only two books available that deal with Georgian wine. One is a book from the 1960's that is pretty clearly a Soviet propaganda book called The Wines and Cognacs of Georgia. While interesting in it's own way, it's not a very good source of information for the current state of the industry (the artwork is killer, though). The other book is called The Vine, Wine, and the Georgians, and it is not easy to obtain. My copy has not arrived yet, so in the meantime, Wikipedia is my source, though it appears to have the information entered by someone from the Department of Agriculture or at least by someone with a vested interest in the success of Georgian wines. It reads more like an advertisement than an encyclopedic reference, but what are you gonna do?

Kindzmarauli is a red wine, made from the Saperavi grape, that is vinified in a semi-sweet style. I am not clear on whether there is sugar added or whether the fermentation is stopped with some residual sugar (UPDATE: it seems that grapes are picked extraordinarily ripe and the fermentation is halted before all the sugar converts to alcohol. My best guess is that they drop the temperature to kill off the yeast in order to keep some of the sugar around but I'm not 100% sure). The vines are cultivated on the slopes of the Caucasus mountain range in the Kvareli region of Kakheti, Georgia, which is in the far eastern part of the country. Most of the wine I've been able to find from Georgia comes from Kakheti.

I will say right off the bat that, as a general rule, I'm not a fan of red wines with any sweetness except for ports or other red dessert wines like Brachetto d'Acqui. That said, I tried to table that particular prejudice and approach Kindzmarauli with an open mind.

The bottle that I had was from the same producer as the Mukuzani that I enjoyed, JSC Corporation (pictured at right). The vintage was 2007 and the price was $16. The wine had the same intense saturation of the Mukuzani, again from the intense pigmentation of the teinturier grape variety, Saperavi. It had an inky, dark black core with a bright purple rim to it. On the nose, the wine was a little grapey and instantly reminded me of grape juice. There were also blueberry and strawberry jam notes to it as well. The nose wasn't explosive, but it was persistent and pleasant.

On the palate, the wine had a full mouthfeel with medium acidity. There was a little tannic bite to it, but it was very faint. Grape juice, again, was the dominant impression here. There was also black cherry and blackcurrant jam tastes. All of the fruit flavors here were thick, ripe and jammy. The sweetness was definitely noticeable, but it wasn't cloying. This certainly isn't a dessert wine, though it does seem like it would be a natural fit with some milk chocolate. I tried the wine with a little bit of cheese, which was a very bad idea and I do not recommend that you do the same. I had the wine with a pan seared trout for dinner and while it wasn't a spectacular match, it was more than serviceable. It's one of the few wines I can think of that might be perfect with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

So did it convert me to the semi-sweet red wine world? Not exactly. I will not be looking for other Kinzmarauli bottlings from this producer or others, but I will probably check out other semi-sweet reds from Georgia and other regions (I currently have one waiting for me that is an Italian wine from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cesanese grapes). It seems to me that many of the Eastern European wines that I see in shops are semi-sweet, and I'd hate to write off a whole corner of the world without giving them a fair shot.

Mukuzani - Saperavi

Today's wine is one that I knew absolutely nothing about prior to purchasing the bottle you see on the left. I was in a local wine shop, Brookline Fine Wine & Gourmet, which has an nice selection of Greek and Eastern European wines, looking for new things to try when I stumbled across this bottle. My familiarity with Georgian wine begins and ends with the trivial bit of information that the Rkatsiteli grape is native to that country and is grown voluminously there (Rkatsiteli is grown in limited quantities in the Northeastern US and will be the subject of a future post on this blog).

So I went ahead and bought the bottle. I've done some research since, and it turns out that Georgia is a pretty highly regarded wine country in Eastern Europe and their wines are considered the best of all the former Soviet Republics. They rank second in production for the region behind only Moldova (there's Moldova again!). Wine history in this region goes back to between 7000 and 5000 BC and there are nearly 500 native vinifera varietals! Of those, only 38 are grown commercially, and one of those grapes is saperavi.

Saperavi is a very unusual grape. It belongs to a group known as teinturier grapes which are unique because in addition to having red skins, they also have red pulps, and therefore red juice. Most red wine grapes have dark skins and clear pulps; the color in your red wine comes from the juice's contact with the skins during the fermentation process. The pulp of teinturier grapes contains the pigment anthocyanin (the same pigment that gives beets and red berries their color and which is also a powerful antioxidant) which gives it its unusual color. Few teinturier grapes are used as the primary grape in a bottle of wine, but saperavi is one of them. Saperavi originated in the Kakheti region of Georgia, but is planted widely throughout the country. This particular bottle is from Kakheti, a rare chance to taste a wine produced in a grape's natural home.

So what does Mukuzani mean? Well, Georgian wine is labeled much like French and Italian wine. What you see on the bottle is the name of the place where the wine comes from, and within those places, very particular kinds of wines are made. Mukuzani is an area in Kakheti where they are only allowed to make dry wines from 100% saperavi grapes. These wines tend to be made from grapes selected for their high quality and are watched over very carefully through the vinification process. The wine must be kept in oak for 3 years before release.

What does it taste like? I'll confess, when I first opened it, I had a sinking feeling. The cork popped and a very sour smell came out of the bottle. It's a smell that I've never been able to pin down, but it seems to hang around cheap, poorly produced bottles and tends to make the wine taste sour and out of balance. A first sniff in the glass and a first taste weren't very encouraging either. The smell and flavor were akin to canned, stewed tomatoes. In color, it was dark. Really dark. Opaque, inky black in the middle to a crimson rim. At the time, I was not aware that saperavi was a teinturier grape (I'll confess, I had never heard of teinurier grapes until about an hour ago when I was doing research for this post), so the deep, intense color was bit mystifying to me, given how hollow and sour the initial nose was. At first sip, the wine was definitely full bodied with soft, well-integrated tannins, but it just tasted a little off. I poured a full glass, finished making dinner, and then sat down with the wine one more time.

An amazing thing happened. The sour, tinny, stewed smell dissipated and in its wake was a dense, solid core of charcoal, pencil lead and dark dark dark cherries. Those flavors persisted on the palate and added some notes of black licorice and a lingering kind of scorched taste, but not in a bad way. Scorched like how sometimes a pizza from a really hot brick oven gets some black spots on the crust and those little scorched bits add complexity and character to it. That's what these flavors were like. If I had to make a comparison, I would say that it reminds me of wines from the hotter parts of the Rhone Valley like Gigondas, or even of a Paulliac from Bordeaux with the pencil lead and dark black flavors.

The take home message here is that this wine is dark in every way you can think of. It is inky black in color with charcoal, smoky, ripe black fruits in the nose and palate. It is dense and layered. It is probably the Platonic Ideal of wine to serve with grilled meats, especially steak or sausage. If I have a gripe, it's that I think it could have stood to have a bit more tannic structure to hold some of that density up and the acidity could have used a little boost as well (I would rate it as low/med acidity), but on the whole, this was a huge shock and a very pleasant surprise to me. I think the producer of my bottle was JSC Corporation, but that's a guess. The picture above is the same bottle I had (mine was a 2005 vintage) and it only cost $13. This is a stellar wine at that price, and would probably improve with a few more years in the bottle.