The Khvanchkara micro-zone

Twenty kilometres of the Rioni valley

Khvanchkara is not a brand but a piece of land drawn on the map. The micro-zone lies in the Ambrolauri municipality: the southern slopes of the Lechkhumi ridge on the right bank of the Rioni and the northern slope of the Racha ridge on the left, a strip some twenty kilometres along the valley. It takes in about thirty villages, among them Khvanchkara itself, Tsesi, Sadmeli, Tola, Chrebalo, Bugeuli, Kvatskhuti, Krikhi, Jvarisa, Gori and Abanoeti, as well as the south-eastern part of the Lechkhumi municipality and the Tsageri villages of Alpana and Orbeli.

The vineyards keep to altitudes between 450 and 750 metres. The valley is closed in by rock, the slopes are turned towards the Rioni, and the soils are humus-carbonate, stony and rich in limestone: they take up heat readily and give it back just as quickly at night. The sum of active temperatures is 3350-3750 degrees, annual rainfall 1050-1100 mm, and the sun shines 1900-2000 hours a year. The grapes are picked in the second half of October, when sugar reaches 24 per cent and the nights are already cold, so fermentation in the cellar stops of its own accord.

The rules of the appellation are strict. Only Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli grown inside the micro-zone; no more than seven tonnes of grapes per hectare and no more than 650 litres of wine per tonne; the wine must be made on the spot, though it may be bottled elsewhere. The finished wine carries 30-45 grams of sugar per litre, no less than 11 per cent alcohol and no less than 5 of acidity. It may not go on sale before the first of January following the harvest.

The zone was named after the wine, not before it. An essay on Caucasian winemaking from 1875 lists Tola, Khvanchkara, Bugeuli and Tsesi as the best places in Racha; from the 1870s the wine of the princely Kipiani family travelled through Kutaisi and Batumi on to Russia and abroad. Its first medal came at the Batumi agricultural exhibition of 1900, its Grand Prix at the international exhibition in Belgium in 1907. Since 1930 the «Kipiani wine» has been called Khvanchkara, and in the Georgian register of appellations of origin it stands as number one.