Why it matters
The producer
Giorgi Natenadze makes wine from grape varieties that had no names, no records, and no living winemakers to ask about them. His winery in the Samtskhe-Javakheti highlands of southern Georgia sits at elevations between 1,000 and 1,650 metres near the Turkish border, in a region that produced no wine at all for roughly four centuries. Ottoman forces destroyed every vineyard in Meskheti during their occupation. The viticultural tradition disappeared so completely that when Natenadze pressed his first harvest in 2009, he had to find his grapes by walking the mountain forests and identifying vines that had survived by growing wild up fruit trees.
He has spent more than a decade at that work. He has discovered 40 rare varieties and identified 24. He has located vines over 100 years old and at least one specimen he estimates at over 400 years old, still fruiting. His annual production does not exceed 1,200 bottles across all three labels, because the recovered vines, the extreme altitude, and the qvevri cellar he uses do not allow for more.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Samtskhe-Javakheti is the southernmost wine-growing region of Georgia, a high plateau and mountain zone that borders Turkey to the south and Armenia to the southeast. The Meskheti sub-region within it sits at altitudes where summers are short and cool, nights drop sharply even in August, and fruit ripens slowly. Those conditions produce wines with bright acidity and fresh fruit rather than the fuller, richer profile of Georgia's lower-elevation Kakheti region. The elevation band Natenadze works, from 1,000 to 1,650 metres, is among the highest in the Caucasus for viticulture.
The Ottoman occupation severed the region's winemaking continuity so thoroughly that none of the grape varieties Natenadze works with appeared in Georgian ampelography. The place labels his bottles carry, Meskhuri and Samtskhe-Javakheti, signal a recovered geography as much as a legal appellation.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The foraged vines grow on their own roots, ungrafted, climbing fruit trees in the mountain forest the way they have for generations. Natenadze harvests them by hand and ferments them in qvevri, the buried clay vessels that are the traditional Georgian fermentation and ageing container. Six months of skin contact in the qvevri extracts colour, texture, and aromatic complexity from the grape skins and pulp before the wine moves to stainless steel for finishing. No irrigation. No oak. No commercial yeasts. The altitude and the wild character of the recovered varieties determine what ends up in the bottle.
The qvevri method matters for these wines because it was the method used in Meskheti before the Ottoman period. Fermenting in buried clay with extended skin contact is not a contemporary affectation here; it is the closest Natenadze can get to what the region would have done before the gap.
Wines to know
The range in view
Meskhuri Red blends three foraged varieties: Meskhuri Sapere, Meskhuri Kharistvala (Bull's Eye Red), and Tskhenis Dzudzu Tetri (Horse Breast White), the last a white-fleshed grape included in the red blend. Six months in qvevri with full skin contact gives the wine a deep colour and a layered nose: fresh red cherry, wild berry, and dried mountain herbs. The texture is silky rather than grippy, the tannins fine and integrated, the fruit cool and bright against a finish that carries the altitude in its freshness rather than weight.
Meskhuri White (Tetri) draws on four foraged varieties: Akhaltsikhuri Tetri, Meskhuri Mtsvane, Chitiskvertskha Tetri (Bird's Egg White), and Chitistvala Tetri. Six months of skin contact in qvevri produces a gently amber, unfiltered wine. The mouthfeel is rounded and smooth, the acidity cool and sustained, the aromatic character lifted and herbaceous rather than oxidative.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Meskhuri Red. It is the most direct way into what Natenadze is doing: three foraged varieties from mountain forest, fermented together in qvevri for six months, finished in stainless steel with no oak and no additions. The wine is silky, cool-fruited, and herb-edged, with fresh red cherry, wild berry, and dried mountain herbs on the nose and a clean, light finish. It carries the altitude in its brightness and the wildness of the recovered grapes in its aromatic character. No other wine region produces anything quite like it, because no other winery has recovered these particular varieties from this particular mountain landscape.