Alice in Wine Wonderland

Georgia – the country not the state – now has validation to their world's oldest wine region claim.

Proof was discovered just 30 miles south of Tbilisi. Carbon dating excavated pottery jars containing wine traces linked to 5980BC left the previous oldest, Iran, in the dust by about 1000 years. But in a world where people race to be the biggest, the best, or the oldest, I thought Georgia already had something far superior. Tenacity.

When the news broke I was in Los Angeles at RAW, a natural wine fair. Coincidentally, I was with Georgians, Archil Guniava and his winemaking, college-aged daughter Nino. We were drinking his white wine made from the Krakuna grape. Most probably it was made the way that ancient wine had been: foot-stomped into a hollowed-out log, flowed into a buried kvevri – a large clay fermentation vessel. The wine stayed on its skins for eight months until bottled. Its taste was precise, a little scratchy and full of life.

The Guniava's were ecstatic. Their country was number one. We toasted gaumarjos! I threw in a mazel tov, but I wasn't shocked with the revelation. After all, the Georgians have been claiming 8000 vintages for quite a while. The real stunner for me is that throughout centuries of wars that killed winemakers, invaders that yanked out vines and the decades of Soviet five-year plans that destroyed wine's quality, Georgian’s continued to make wine.

My first visit to the country was in 2011 for the First International Kvevri Conference. The host was the Alaverdi Monastery. My topic? Where did Georgia (and their like-minded producers) fit in to the global natural wine scene. Bigly, I was going to tell them. After all, there wasn’t enough of the good stuff in the world to go around. Drinkers were waiting.

But before I took to the pulpit, I listened to a scientist from Germany promoting enological products such as commercial yeast instead of what is a tenet of natural winemaking – spontaneous fermentation.

Heresy, I thought. I wasn't alone. There was a rustle of emotion. The enologist for the monastery's winery, who bore something of a resemblance to a more kindly Gorbachev, came to his feet. I saw he was proudly wearing traditional garb, a sword resting on his hip. As he started to speak his voice shook with emotion. He accused the researcher as if she were a heretic. "Are you saying that God did not provide the grape with everything it needed to make wine? There are no bad yeasts."

The fact that a church would support shunning trickery in the laboratory for anything that wasn't absolutely necessary was thrilling for me. The man was given resounding applause.

From my perch, Georgia's traditional winemakers had so much to teach the rest of the world. Like that spiritual enologist, and like Nino and Archil, the commitment to their wine was like that to the blood in veins. They didn't need yeasts or enzymes or any tricks. Their attachment went far deeper than anything I've ever seen, rooted in tradition, not in marketing trends.

In 2011 there were about five natural winemakers in Georgia bottling their juice. As of May there were about 80. Overall exports (natural and conventional) are up 80 percent since 2013. As long as Putin doesn't mess with them, their wine future looks great.

To me, the real power in the recent science news is not who wears the oldest winemaking crown, but what kind of crazy country keeps tradition alive for 8000 years? This is about more than wine, isn't it? The reason it has endured as one of the most profound symbols of death and resurrection and life and joy is not just for the drink, but for its love story.