43 Viticultural learnings
Steve Madgwick heads to Georgia's Kakheti region, said to be the birthplace of wine, to sample the fruits of its age-old traditions.
As long as the singer's voice floats up from the hole, the new vintage is underway and on track, like thousands before it. If the singing unexpectedly stops, however, the rescue mission kicks in and the process must begin again.
The hole in question is the opening of the qvevri, an egg-shaped earthenware vessel buried into the earth, used to ferment, store and age the ‘natural’ or ‘unfiltered’ wines of Georgia. Natural because this Caucasus country doesn't remove grape skins, pips and stalks during fermentation, or add unnatural preservatives, yeast or extra sugar during wine production (sometimes sulphides are added at bottling).
Cleaning the qvevri is crucial. The larger ones are metres deep, holding thousands of litres, so winemakers climb down inside to scrub them with brushes made from the naturally antiseptic roots of St John's wort and pressed cherry tree bark. Georgian wine is
