A few months ago, right after I quit my job, I was considering working part-time with a Georgian wine importer — a chance to actually really learn about wines I'd only ever known in passing, but had always loved drinking.
So naturally, when the opportunity came up, I thought, sure.
That obviously didn't work out. If you're nice, I'll give you the tea another time. Another Drink Time. If you catch my drift.
But the portfolio, though wildly unorganized, had some genuinely great wines attached to it.
One stuck with me.
The Grapes
A co-ferment. Two grapes, fermented together from the very start, not blended after the fact.
Saperavi and Mtsvane.
If you know anything about Georgian wine — and I do — you already know this isn't some new, trendy technique. Georgia has roughly 8,000 years of winemaking history, with the world's oldest known evidence of winemaking. There are grapes and regions over there that most of us on this side of the world will never taste in our lifetime.
But that's a story for another day.
Saperavi is Georgia's most-planted red grape, and it's a strange one. Most red wine gets its color from the skins, but Saperavi's juice itself runs red. It's called a "teinturier" grape for that reason. Even the name means "to dye" or "to paint." It doesn't just make red wine. It practically insists on it.
Mtsvane is the opposite kind of grape entirely. A white, aromatic grape, sometimes called "Georgian Riesling." Mtsvane literally means "green."
Put those two in the same tank together, from the very first crush, and you're not blending two finished wines afterward. You're letting them become one thing together, from day one.
And after I got a taste of it, I went down a research wine hole I did not see coming.
And I want you to come with me.
The Modern Ideology
"Co-ferment" is one of those words that sounds like a new, cool, natural-wine-bar invention, doesn't it?
It isn't.
It's just what wine used to be, before people decided it needed managing.
For much of wine history, vineyards weren't planted in neat single-variety rows the way we see them today. Different grapes grew together, were harvested together, and often ended up fermenting together. Nobody was making a stylistic choice. They were working with what was actually in front of them.
Côte-Rôtie in France's Northern Rhône is one of the most famous modern examples. Syrah can be co-fermented with Viognier, sometimes in very small amounts. It's traditional, regulated, and still practiced today.
And then there's Italy.
Mixed red-and-white grape fermentations were once completely normal in Chianti. In 2006, the rules changed. Chianti Classico could no longer include white grapes. If you wanted to keep making wine the old way, you had to give up the fancier label and settle for the lesser one instead.
Some winemakers did exactly that. On purpose. They'd rather make the wine the way it's always been made than keep a label that told them to stop.
Sit with that for a second.
Somewhere along the way, the "correct" version of a centuries-old wine became the version that followed the newest set of rules.
Back to Georgia
Which brings me back to Georgia.
Because in a place with thousands of years of winemaking behind it, I don't think co-ferment was ever really a technique to begin with.
It's just Saturday.
Saperavi and Mtsvane in the same vessel isn't a trend chasing an old idea.
It might be the old idea, still going, while the rest of the wine world was busy deciding what wine was supposed to do.
That bottle in my fridge isn't new.
Actually, it's just old enough that it forgot to ask for permission.
I'm not naming the producer here — not yet, anyway. Some relationships are still finding their shape, and I'd rather protect that than rush it.
But if you want to know what's actually in my glass, drop me a line. I'll send you the details myself.