Description

ABOUT THE PRODUCER:
K’AVSHIRI is a truly extraordinary project, uniting five years of work by British former wine critic and author of over 25 books, Robert Joseph, and Vladimer Kublashvili, highly experienced wine judge and chief winemaker for Winery Khareba one of Georgia’s leading wine companies. The seeds of K’AVSHIRI date back to 1988 when Robert Joseph, made his first trip to Georgia, then still part of the Soviet Union. He was fascinated by the history, language, architecture, delicious east-meets-west cuisine and wines like nothing he had tasted before. In 2018, after several other visits to Georgia, Robert Joseph, who had co-created the innovative le Grand Noir wine range in France, met Kublashvili and was immediately struck by his talent and imagination. While tasting wines from indigenous and often rare Georgian grapes from the Kakheti and Imereti regions, the two men began to imagine the creation of a very special wine.

THE VINTAGE:
This wine is a rare multi-vintage blend, following in the footsteps of other top quality fine wines, produced from 4 vintages, blending 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017. Every assemblage will have its own character – and most likely its own combination of grape varieties – while remaining true to the K’AVSHIRI style. The back label and website clearly reveal the proportions of each vintage in each blend.

ABOUT THE VINEYARD:
The vineyards are planted at various altitudes between 150 to 500 m. The climate is moderately humid with hot summers and moderately cold winters. The soil in Kakheti is clay and loamy with a loose structure while in Imereti, the soils are humic-calcareous and the vineyard is planted on slightly inclined slopes, terraces and plains, all of which are orientated towards the north-west and the west. The vineyard is planted with cover grass between the vines to reduce weeds; the soil is mulched and treated with organic mineral fertilisers. The vines are trained according to the Vertical Shoot Position (VSP) method and are double Guyot pruned.

THE WINEMAKING PROCESS:
The blend comprises: Rkatsiteli (25.5%); Mtsvane (20.3%); Krahuna (14.8%); Tsiska (10.6%); Tsolikouri (8.2%); Khikhvi (6.7%); Kakhuri (4.8%); Aligoté (3.1%); Muscat (2.6%); Mtsvivane (2.2%); Kisi (1.2%). 11.7% was produced in Qvevri, aged in clay amphora for 6 to 9 month. The remaining 85.3 % of the wine was conventionally fermented in stainless steel. 5% of the blend was fermented on the skins in stainless steel. 10% of this wine is aged in 3rd year oak barrels from 3 to 6 months.

OUR TASTING NOTES:
Pale straw in colour, it has a complex nose that evokes white stone fruit – peach – with floral blossom and hints of orange. On the palate which is dry, yet rich and long, there are these same complex characteristics with a hint of apricot and even passion fruit. The vanilla oak is in the background and there is the subtly tannic note that comes from the qvevri, but the mouthfeel is closer to a Burgundy or white Rhône than traditional skin-contact Georgian amphora wines. The finish is fresh and slightly exotic, thanks to the Kisi, Krakhuna and the hint of Muscat.

GRAPE VARIETY:
Kavshiri 26%, Rkatsiteli 24%, Mtsvane 15%, Tsitska 10%, Other Varieties 9%, Krakhuna 8%.