Iberieli: Natural Wines from Georgia’s Guria Region

Last week I met and tasted with Zurab Topuridze, owner and winemaker of Iberieli Winery, at the Vino Underground wine bar, located near Freedom Square in Tbilisi.  Zurab’s winery and vineyards are in Guria, a province of Georgia bordering the Black Sea. He makes natural wines using winemaking practices traditional to Guria and principally uses grape varieties indigenous to Guria, including the region’s best-known variety, Chkhaveri.

Zurab is from a family of Gurian winegrowers.  During the Soviet bloody repression of the 1930s, Zurab’s grandfather fled from Guria to Kartli in Eastern Georgia to teach agronomy to the German settlers in Bolnisi.  He brought with him cuttings of Chkhaveri, his favorite grape. Zurab helped his grandfather and made his first wine at the age of 14. He continued to make wine for family use, but in 2001 began planting a vineyard in his family’s village of Sakvavistke and in 2008 produced his first commercial wine.  The 2010 Chkhaveri was his first export to Japan, which was his most important customer until displaced by Germany.

With its Black Sea location, Guria is a humid place, so growers must find high, cool locations to plant and follow cultivation practices that encourage air flow in the canopy.  Still, disease pressure is high and requires frequent spraying.

Zurab makes wine the West Georgian way, in qvevri, but without stems and often on partial skins, unlike Kakheti where traditionally the wine is kept on all the skins and stems for 6 months or more. He varies skins contact depending on the vintage and the grape variety and does some cofermentation of varieties.  He also makes wine from Kakhetian varieties using West Georgian techniques. He’s also a co-founder of Georgia’s Natural Wine Association.

The US importer is Ghvinos Wines.

Wines from Guria

Iberieli 2022 Chkhaveri Guria 90+ Opens with citrus, spice and mineral like notes. Clean and crisp on the palate with very good balance and subtle citrus flavors. A blend of vineyard parcels with a bedrock of weathered basalt. This pink colored grape is fermented on 20% of the skins and removed after one week, so the wine’s color is amber. We also tasted the 2010 vintage of this wine which had longer skin contact, a redder color and dried red fruit, tea and fresh apple notes. This is the wine that Zurab first exported to Japan.

Iberieli 2022 Tetri Kamuri and Tsolikouri Guria  90 A This clean and fresh blend of Tsolikouri and Kanuri Tetra evokes a cool, mountain stream. Bright on the attack with light flavors of pear and mangosteen. An easy drinking, medium-high acid wine that would pair perfectly with sushi. Crushed and then pressed.

Iberieli 2021 Ojaleshi Guria 90  Semi-opaque with a violet edge. A dark fruited wine of blackberry with savory, meaty notes. Full bodied with high acidity and a very dry finish. Foot crushed, destemmed and then fermented in qvevri with about a month on the skins.

Wines from Kakheti

Iberieli 2022 Cecilia Kakheti 92 Medium gold. Bouquet of honeycomb, dried peach, herbal tea and manzinilla. Full in the mouth with complex flavors of tea and dried fruit. Finishes dry. A blend of 50/50 Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane. Half the Rkatsiteli fermented 7 months in qvevri on the stems and skins.

Iberieli 2022 Mtsvane for Mariam Kakheti 91 Medium amber color. Beautifully perfumed nose of berries and flowers. Creamy on the attack with good balancing acidity, flavors of sweet berries and orange peel, and round tannins. Four days maceration on the skins and stems. 12% alc.