Kldeeti

Amiran Vepkhvadze, a lawyer by profession, makes two wines from Imeretian grapes he grows organically outside the village of Kldeeti, between Shorapani and Zestaponi. “I used to sell my grapes to large wine ‘factories’, as so many people around here do, but after meeting Ramaz Nikoladze, who has been the catalyst in this area for encouraging us to produce organic qvevri-made wines, I started making and bottling my own wines in 2009,” he says as we stand under a high pergola in his vineyard, around the corner from his house and cellar. This training system, called olikhnari, is traditional to Otskhanuri Sapere, a local variety of red grape. “Even though it is quite tricky to prune, it helps the grapes mature and keeps them raised well off the ground, away from the natural humidity we have in this part of Imereti that Otskhanuri easily falls prey to.”