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Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

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Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#11

Post by gregman1 »

riffraff wrote: post #3

Georgian cuisine and drinking is little known in the west but it's really, really good. It's a pity the country has been democratically backsliding for a while, which has limited their hopes of tighter integration with the EU.

As long as France is in EU no other country on earth can import good wine. Cheap - probably, heavily controlled and in many cases partially owned by French or in some rare cases other European companies (like in Chilean or Argentinian cases). This market is rather hardcore and kinda monopolized in EU. Go ask anyone who knows wine market or works at a Georgian (or any ex-Soviet restaurant). Georgian wine enjoyed this kind of monopoly in USSR so no surprise here. During that time wine from Moldova wine was an affordable great quality underdog.

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#12

Post by Khaine »

dcrazy wrote: post #6
petesergeant wrote: post #4

They're very proud of it too, but having spent time in Tbilisi (strong recommend!), there's a very simple reason you can buy French and Australian wine at your local shop, but nobody has bothered to make sure there's a good selection of Georgian wine there.

Germany and especially Austria produce some rather poor reds but have carved out a niche for Riesling and Gewürtztraminer. Is there a similar niche for Georgian wine?

Georgia makes wine in its traditional style or 'european' style. Traditional style is where the crushed grapes including branches is stored in clay pots (called Qvevri) for fermentation and aging. This means Georgian wines often have a different colour and can be cloudy.

European is the style of how most wine is made in Europe

The most famous style is Saperavi which is a Red wine.

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#13

Post by 3RTB297 »

dcrazy wrote: post #6
petesergeant wrote: post #4

They're very proud of it too, but having spent time in Tbilisi (strong recommend!), there's a very simple reason you can buy French and Australian wine at your local shop, but nobody has bothered to make sure there's a good selection of Georgian wine there.

Germany and especially Austria produce some rather poor reds but have carved out a niche for Riesling and Gewürtztraminer. Is there a similar niche for Georgian wine?

I'm not who you asked, but the niche for Georgian wine is orange wine, which is white wine left to sit on the grape skins for a couple days, so it pulls more tannins. It's not exclusive to them alone, but the more distinct niche is orange wine aged in clay pots that gives it a distinct earthiness. If you appreciate understanding food anthropology, this is more similar to how wine was produced in ancient times, as opposed to a cabernet or modern varieties aged in oak or stainless steel.

You can usually find maybe one variety of orange wine in the US at larger wine stores with a substantial international selection.

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#14

Post by poisonarena »

riffraff wrote: post #3

Georgian cuisine and drinking is little known in the west but it's really, really good. It's a pity the country has been democratically backsliding for a while, which has limited their hopes of tighter integration with the EU.

I love Sakartvelo, but its ottoman/turkish food meets slavic food.. I can't think of a single dish (khachapuri/khinkali/etc).. that is from Georgia, that also doesnt exist in its neighboring countries in the middle east under a different name, russia/ukraine, and the balkans. Dont tell them that though, they don't like it! Its a total crossroads of a country

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#16

Post by Tade0 »

gnull wrote: post #7
riffraff wrote: post #3

Georgian cuisine and drinking is little known in the west but it's really, really good. It's a pity the country has been democratically backsliding for a while, which has limited their hopes of tighter integration with the EU.

I doubt they will benefit from that integration much. But I'm pretty sure the way there will hurt. Georgia's economy is tied to Russia at the moment, and as you said Westerners are not exactly lining up to travel to Georgia and order its wine (Russians are). The narrative "people want EU (aka freedom and democracy), but bad dictators won't let them" is a populist one. And EU has been using it like carrot and stick to…

> The narrative "people want EU (aka freedom and democracy), but bad dictators won't let them" is a populist one.

Former eastern block members that are currently in the EU beg to differ.

It's no accident that there's such a developmental gap between those of the former communist states which turned to the west vs those who remained in Russia's sphere of influence.

You can't meaningfully prosper with Russia.

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#17

Post by shermantanktop »

gnull wrote: post #9
legerdemain wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason they call them Caucasian.

[flagged]

In Florida it wouldn’t be confusing to refer to someone from Hawaii as “Hawaiian,” but in Hawaii it means something much more specific about ancestry, and it’s considered rude and even offensive to misuse it.

In NYC they pronounce Oregon as “Ore-gone,” even though Oregonians pronounce it “Ore-gun.” In Portland, mispronunciation marks you as an ignorant outsider.

Every place has idiosyncratic misuses of terms that come from somewhere else. Of course you are correct about “Caucasian,” but wherever you are from, I’m sure you misuse some other term.

Labeling it as uneducated and unaware is a form of snobbery that you’re unlikely to be entitled to. None of us are.

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#19

Post by adrian_b »

legerdemain wrote: post #5
dyauspitr wrote: post #2

Crazy to think that’s roughly around when white people started becoming… white. It was basically all dark skinned people on the planet before then.

There's a reason they call them Caucasian.

No, Caucasian is a bogus term whose origin is in a misinterpretation of the Bible.

In the Genesis, humans were partitioned in descendants of Japheth, Ham and Shem, hence terms like Hamites and Semites.

However the meaning of this partition was completely other than its naive interpretation that was common during Medieval times and until recently.

This partition had absolutely nothing to do with race or with the languages spoken by people, which were pretty much irrelevant in the Antiquity. The partition was based purely on political dependence.

The descendants of Ham were the people politically dependent on Egypt and the descendants of Shem were the people dependent on Assyro-Babylonia.

An example of people closely related and who spoke a very similar language, but who were divided based on political allegiance is that the Phoenicians were counted as descendants of Ham, because they belonged to Egypt, while Hebrews were counted as descendants of Shem, because they belonged to Assyro-Babylonia.

Japheth refers to Caucasus and the descendants of Japheth were the people from Anatolia, where Indo-European kingdoms, like that of the Hittites, were dominant.

During Medieval times, this grouping of people from the Bible was completely misunderstood and it was believed that it refers to race, so it was believed that "descendants of Ham" refers to Africans and "descendants of Japheth", i.e. Caucasians, refers to "white" Europeans, hence the stupid name used in America of "Caucasian".

Re: Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years

#20

Post by te_chris »

dcrazy wrote: post #6
petesergeant wrote: post #4

They're very proud of it too, but having spent time in Tbilisi (strong recommend!), there's a very simple reason you can buy French and Australian wine at your local shop, but nobody has bothered to make sure there's a good selection of Georgian wine there.

Germany and especially Austria produce some rather poor reds but have carved out a niche for Riesling and Gewürtztraminer. Is there a similar niche for Georgian wine?

“Rather poor reds”. Um what? Germany and Austria produce a lot of excellent wine, red and white.

Austrian reds are some of my favourites.

In London, Georgian orange wines are very popular and that seems to be what most people who are cursorily into wine would know them for here.

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