Tsolikouri

The white grape of western Georgia. Where Kakheti in the east has Rkatsiteli, the green valleys of Imereti and the mountains of Racha-Lechkhumi have Tsolikouri — a late, thick-skinned variety that keeps its bright acidity through a wetter, cooler autumn than the eastern heartland ever sees.

It is a shape-shifter. Fermented fresh it gives a crisp, orchard-fruited dry white; fermented on its skins in qvevri it turns amber and tannic in the Georgian manner; and picked late in the high Lechkhumi valleys it makes Tvishi, the country's celebrated semi-sweet. In Imereti it is blended with Tsitska and Krakhuna for Sviri. One grape, the full register of a wine culture eight thousand years deep.