Wine

Solomon ‘Soliko’ Tsaishvili has been one of the catalysts of the recent Soliko tsaishvili movement in Georgia to bottle natural qvevri-made wines. When I first met him in 2008 at Terra Madre in Turin, he was with Ramaz Nikoladze. They had a booth at the Slow Food event aimed at highlighting biodiversity and the global communities who are keeping food and winemaking traditions alive. A large poster with photos of the clay qvevri was pinned to the wall, and they stood proud but sheepish, unable to communicate as neither side spoke each other’s language. There was a lot of buzz about them at the event: ‘Have you seen, the Georgians who make their wines in clay jars are here?’