Robe — Ink-dark to the rim — the flesh itself stains
blackberry
black cherry
liquorice
sweet spice
pomegranate
Palate
Deep, grippy and savoury, the long skin ferment leaving firm tannin and a dried-fruit shadow
Ageing
5–20 years
Serving
15–17 °C
Georgians have fermented wine on its skins in buried clay vessels — qvevri — for some eight thousand vintages: residues on potsherds from Gadachrili Gora have been dated to around 6000 BC, and UNESCO inscribed the qvevri method in 2013. The vessel is sunk to its neck in the earth, which steadies the ferment's temperature without machinery.
Saperavi, Kakheti's great grape, is a teinturier — its flesh is dark as well as its skin — and the wine pours inky to the rim: black fruit, liquorice and sweet spice, with firm tannin from the long months on skins. It is poured at the supra, the Georgian feast, under the tamada's ordered sequence of toasts.