Interesting article by AndrewJefford in Decanter: GeorgianQvervi
on his revisit to Georgia after a 5 yr hiatus.
The one thing that caught my eye:
It seems like to say that some of the Georgian winemakers are resentful of the worldwide use of amphora/qvervi and the making of natural wines. These are techniques that the Georgians created centuries ago and they seem to feel resentful. Of course, they can thank SweetAlice for pushing this movement. Maybe they’ll bar her from Georgia??
Seems like a challenging conundrum for the Georgian winemakers. Without the exposure of the wines, and unique production style, I doubt there is a market for what they produce in the states. And what market did exist would be less capable of sustaining well crafted wines(and convincing distributors that it is worth their time to carry the wines).
Counterbalance that with the use of their traditional techniques by a burgeoning and popular group of winemakers of quite mixed levels of experience, mixed levels of talent, and very mixed levels of commitment to craft rather than story. All with better access to media…
Not to say that natural wines are bad, but they most certainly are hit or miss.
Tough situation for someone truly committed to continuing a craft so closely related to their cultural heritage.
The idea of “cultural appropriation” is such utter horseshit I can’t take anyone seriously who uses the term. Imagine the first caveman who picked up a stone and hit someone with it. He must have felt really bad when he saw someone pick up a stone and try to hit him with it!
And then that whole invention of the wheel thing. Or writing?
Oh yeah, and wine making. They claim to have been the origin of it in Georgia but that’s only because people like McGovern culturally appropriated the use of carbon dating to determine that the age of vessels found in Georgia is older than those found elsewhere. But that’s only because the culturally appropriated concept of archeology is limited to what we can find in the present. And not for nothing, but the Egyptians and many others were using crock pots for their wine - it was the container of choice around the world back in ancient times before being replaced by stainless steel refrigerated tanks.
So it’s OK for the Georgians to culturally appropriate something but the appropriation stops with them?
The main thing Georgian wine makers need to be concerned with isn’t the use of those qvervi, it’s their wine!
Because of its recent problems with deviant natural wines, Georgia has now introduced a requirement for obligatory tasting of any wine destined for export produced in quantities of over 3,000 litres – except, frustratingly, for wines with less than 40 mg/l of sulphur, where caveat emptor must always hold (and for which volumes will always be small).
So I guess they are worried about ‘typicity’ in their wines - not a bad thing at all IMHO.
Thanks for the link, Al - interesting article on the ups and downs of the Georgian wine industry in the 20th and 21st centuries. Love the statement in the final paragraph: "So qvevris are clearly not dead, even if they are buried. "
Attempt to ban the use of the name ‘Qvervi’ by non-Georgians, arguing it’s actually a place name no-one had ever heard of, and hence is a protected name (aka the Prosecco defence)
Encourage such use, but trademark and ramp-up Qvervi production, insisting the copies are inferior, and only the genuine product is worth buying.
Picking up on a few unrelated points mentioned above, and by Jefford…
Simon Woolf did not say that qvevri wine production died out. He wrote “The iconic qvevri albeit died out in commercial winemaking during the late 20th century” (my emphasis). But winemaking in Georgia is a lot more than commercial production, and I am sure there was under-the-radar qvevri wine made in the Soviet era. Even today, it is estimated that around 70% of Georgian wine production is non-commercial, being made for family and friends only.
The Alentejo does indeed have a tradition of using clay vessels. But I understand the production method differs from the Georgian qvevri in that the Portuguese vessels are above ground. The tradition is also a lot younger.
Jefford’s article is the first place I have heard about producers being frustrated by cultural appropriation. It might be true, in which case I agree they are being silly, but I got the impression that they were rather pleased that their methods were being adopted by others. It is certainly good business for the qvevri makers!
I think Jefford got hold of the wrong end of the stick when writing about the requirement for tasting of wines to be exported. It makes no sense at all to exempt wines with less than 40mg/li sulphites if the motivation is to deal with “deviant natural wines”. I thought the motivations was rather to make it more difficult for Russia to justify banning Georgian imports in the future. (Actually it is difficult to believe it would help much with that either, if Russia want to trump up some charge.) When I was in Georgia last year, small natural wine producers were concerned extra about the administrative burden it would put on them, and were pushing to get an exemption from the tasting requirement. It looks like they have succeeded.
And is “qvevris” the correct plural of “qvevri” anyway? Julia Harding uses “qvevri” as the plural too, so I usually do the same. Or should we go native and say “qvevrebi”?
