The previous Wine Bloggers Conference on the East Coast was in Charlottesville, Virginia. At that 2011 conference, I took a couple bottles of wine that I had made and shared with other members of the media. One bottle was an east/west blend of Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon and Virginia Tannat. This year’s conference returns to the east in Corning, New York. I plan to take a qvevri wine Kathy and I made in Georgia (Eastern Europe) and a bottle of a qvevri wine we made in Maryland.

Cleaning a qvevri with a cherry bark brush and water

I have written several blog posts about qvevri winemaking on my winemaking blog. However, I haven’t mentioned it very often on the WineTrailTraveler.com blog. Qvevri winemaking is the only winemaking process that is on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The practice is thousands of years old and shows that the ancients knew a thing or two about winemaking.

Filling the qvevri with Rkatsiteli grapes

Today, ancient qvevri winemaking meets new winemaking practices. For instance, I cleaned a qvevri at Twins Wine Cellar in Napareuli in the Kakheti region of Georgia using a cherry bark brush and water. This is ancient technology. After removing the water and repeating the process several times, I lit a sulphur strip, lowered it into the qvevri and let it burn releasing the sulphur gas. When the gas hit the wet sides of the qvevri, the chemical reaction produced sulphuric acid, a sanitizing agent. This is modern technology. Kathy and I, after harvesting Rkatsiteli grapes with a family, filled the qvevri with the grapes minus the stems. The juice fermented and the wine remained on the skins in the qvevri buried underground for the next six months.

On returning to Twins Wine Cellar in April of 2014, we opened the qvevri. We did not use any fining agents or filtering. The wine naturally filtered in the qvevri. I’ll bring of bottle of this to WBC15. Six months of maceration for white wines is not a protocol commonly practiced today. Several Georgian winemakers told me that the skins of grapes are like our mothers. At birth, we do not whisk the child away from its mother. Why then do winemakers do this when making a white wine?

Opening the qvevri after six months

The wine was not filtered or fined.

My Maryland qvevri wine was a challenge. We were in Europe during the prime harvest for white grapes. By the time we returned home, we had slim pickings of white grapes left. We did end up getting some Muscat grapes and destemmed them by hand. After a mild crushing, we placed the grapes in the qvevri, also buried underground. By the end of October, the juice had fermented. It was then time to let it macerate on the skins for several months. We sealed the qvevri and covered it with sand. In April, when we removed the eight inches of sand and opened the cover, we did not observe what we expected. Perhaps the 23-liter qvevri was a bit small, we did check it with our luggage on our return flights from Georgia. Rather then settling to the bottom of the qvevri, the grape skins were mixed with the wine. My theory is that for six months, the skins and wine were in constant motion.

Muscat wine made in a 23 liter qvevri in Maryland

I racked the wine to a carboy and within 24 hours, the suspended particles began to settle to the bottom. Before bottling, I lightly filtered the wine. I’ll also bring a bottle of this to WBC15. If you are attending the conference and would like to sample some wines made the way the ancients south of the Greater Caucus Mountains made and still make wines, let me know. The Wine Bloggers Conference affords an opportunity to share with each other, even winemaking practices that are thousands of years old.

Cheers,
Terry