Why it matters
The producer
In the early 1900s, Orthodox priest Simon Dakishvili began making wine in the village of Shalauri for church services. His family had arrived in this part of Georgia a century and a half earlier, having migrated from the Argun gorge in Chechnya in the 1750s. What Simon started as liturgical work, his descendants turned into a commercial winery, with three oenologists, Gogi, Temur, and Ilona Dakishvili, overseeing production across an 11-hectare estate.
Gogi Dakishvili trained in viticulture and oenology at Odessa, in what was then the Soviet Union, and has since been recognised as a founding winemaker at several major Georgian producers and a pioneer in the revival of qvevri wine technology in Georgia. The winery operates under the Dakishvili Family Vineyards name; Gogi also runs a separate label, Orgo, with his son Temur.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Shalauri lies in Telavi, the main town of Kakheti, Georgia's principal wine-producing region in the eastern part of the country. Kakheti stretches along the Alazani valley between the Greater Caucasus to the north and the Tsiv-Gombori range to the south. The combination of a continental climate, dry summers, and clay-rich alluvial soils has made this region the foundation of Georgian viticulture for thousands of years.
The Telavi district sits at the heart of Kakheti and is home to many of the region's oldest estates. For Dakishvili, the location means working within the same grape-growing landscape that long shaped the qvevri tradition the family now practises alongside modern stainless steel methods.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The estate farms 11 hectares and produces up to 50,000 bottles annually across white, amber, rosé, red, sparkling, and dessert wines. Eight qvevri of 2,000 litres each are buried beneath the cellar floor, the traditional Georgian method of maintaining stable fermentation temperatures through the vessel's contact with the surrounding earth.
Qvevri fermentation, in Gogi Dakishvili's account, works primarily through thermal properties: the buried clay vessel insulates the fermenting wine and promotes temperature eddy currents that naturally mix the must without mechanical intervention. Thin-skinned grape varieties suit this method best, because their tannins remain gentle and the fruit character comes through without being obscured by excessive extraction. The stainless steel tanks produce a different result: clean, fruit-forward wines that work well on their own. The qvevri wines are more complex, savoury, and tannic, and pair more readily with food. Both approaches run in the same cellar, with the grape variety and the intended style determining which vessel is used.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range covers every major colour and style: still whites and reds, amber wines made from extended skin contact in qvevri, rosé, sparkling, and dessert wines. The sparkling wines under the Dakishvili Family name include a Saperavi Rosé Brut Nature from 2015, a Pinot Noir Rosé Brut Zero, and a Kisi Pet Nat from 2021.
The Kisi Pet Nat takes the indigenous Kakheti white grape through a pétillant naturel process, bottled before fermentation is complete so that the wine finishes in bottle without added liqueur. The Saperavi Rosé and Pinot Noir Rosé take two different red grapes through a zero-dosage sparkling method, producing dry, fruit-led sparkling rosés. Across the sparkling range, the wines show clean aromatic character without the volatile or reductive notes that can appear in natural sparkling production.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Kisi Pet Nat 2021. Kisi is an indigenous Kakheti white grape, and the pétillant naturel format ferments it in bottle, producing a lightly sparkling wine with no added dosage and minimal intervention between the vine and the glass. The wine's stone fruit and floral character comes directly from the grape, and the fine mousse from the in-bottle fermentation gives it a texture distinct from conventional sparkling wines. It is not a qvevri wine, but it shows the estate's commitment to working with Georgian grape varieties and low-intervention methods. The qvevri range shows a different, more savoury face of the same philosophy.