Launch Ready

Vintage 2022 wasn’t the party we imagined it to be. Still, here we are with 4 new wines to share with you – each really quite different but all with The Garden’s signature. Here’s the inside line on the timings, terroirs and methods used to make the wines:

Intro Making wine means different things to different people, for us it’s about exploring the potential of a grape, expressing the terroir in which it grows and delivering the wine created to the glass with as little intervention or fuss as possible – our 2022 wines are a true reflection of these ideas – we hope you enjoy them!

It should be noted that We own our own vineyard in Imereti, Western Georgia and for our first vintage making dry wine we made a light and playful Tsolikouri, as we were finding our feet making wine we gave that first vintage away to friends and family to get some feedback – there is in fact one one bottle of that wine left in existence that we know of: so it’s safe to say the first vintage went well. Unfortunately the small matter of a pernicious autoimmune condition has left us unable to make the 3.5 hour commute each way enough to care for the vines properly, thus in 2021 we switched to a negotiant model; sourcing grapes from closer to Tbilisi as this allowed us to focus on the winemaking and sales.

Ojaleshi Carbonic Vintage 2022 started on September 28th in Kakheti where we came upon some organically grown young Ojaleshi Orbeluri which is typically grown in Western Georgia, quite a light coloured red grape we decided it could be seen as having similar characteristics to Gamay – the grape used in Beaujolais Nouveau wines. The grapes were grown in the shadow of the Greater Caucasus Mountains in the Kindzmarauli Microtone. We decided on making the wine in a full carbonic maceration to pull out the fruit characteristics. Punchy, fruity, slightly tart this 11.5% wine really shines when consumed with Asian food, at the same time we’ve heard early tasters polish off a bottle as a refreshing end to a session so we’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Naked Chinuri The second harvest of the 2022 vintage was from the beautiful terroir of Okami at 650masl some 45 minutes drive to the East of Tbilisi. Having worked with Chinuri in 2021 and fallen in love with the characteristics of this grape we decided to harvest a couple of weeks later in 2022 in the hope of creating a wine that is a little bit more of everything. Given that we knew we are going to make direct press wine with no skin contact (that’s what the “naked” refers to) we picked as late as we could on the 9th October before the autumn rains started. We measured sugar at around 23 yet it turned out that many grapes were riper than we expected making for a much more full-bodied expression of a White Chinuri than 2021 was – alcohol is up from 10.5% to 13.4% and as mentioned before there’s more of everything. As before – everything was made in Churi (Imeretian Qvevri) and aged for 7 months on the less without batonage (mixing) – the wine was bottled straight from the churi meaning there will be some variation between bottles which we hope you natural wine fiends will appreciate! Typical butterscotch notes and versatility, eminently quaffable.

Naked Rkatsiteli Our third and final harvest for 2022 was a new terroir for us and one that has produced wines that impressed us quite a lot over the past few years: Bolnisi in Lower Kartli – about 90 minutes drive South of Tbilisi where the lands gently rise towards the Lesser Caucasus Mountains. Whilst there were plenty of skin contact Rkatsitelis from Bolnisi we hadn’t seen many made as pure white wines – we theorised that as the grapes were lighter and less sweet when grown in this terroir it was worth trying to make a direct-press “naked” wine without skin contact and do so in Churi on the lees for 7 months so that the wine could develop fully – what has resulted is a light, clear wine that is easy-drinking, fresh and fun. Grapes were harvested on 12th October and the resulting wine is a friendly 10.5% alcohol.

Rkatsiteli Carbonic You will find it written in some places that carbonic maceration winemaking techniques are not suited to white grapes because allegedly some undesirable flavours develop. Bah humbug say we. We’ve been tasting this wine from its first fermentation and past the malolactic fermentation and honestly it’s one of the most fun experiments we’ve done – all the fruitiness is brought to the fore and what happens in the glass is some pineapple candy magic. There is only a small consignment of this wine available so we strongly advise grabbing some while you can – made from the same lot of grapes used for the Naked Rkatsiteli this is an expression of the grape that may not be for the purist but it probably is for the party animal – don’t be confused by the anthracite label, this wine came to rock you, at a sensible 11.5% alcohol you can imbibe nicely with friends or treat yourself. გაუმარჯოს!