Papari Valley

Organic winery, Kurdadze family

Papari Valley is a family organic winery in Kakheti, on the Papari Fields near the village of Akhasheni (Gurjaani district). Nukri Kurdadze started the business; later his wife Keti Gurabanidze, today the company's CEO and winemaker, and their son Sandro, who runs exports and chacha production, joined him. The horse on the logo was painted by Sandro himself.

The vineyard lies on the slopes of the Tsiv-Gombori ridge, 450–500 metres above sea level, on a rippling plateau: «papari» means «horse's mane» in Georgian, and that is where the name of the valley comes from. The soil is unusual: six layers over four metres, dominated by alluvial-carbonate material. Three appellation zones meet here (Akhasheni, Mukuzani and Gurjaani), but the estate does not use their names and labels its wines its own way.

The first two hectares were bought in 2002, the first experimental wine was made in 2007, and commercial releases began with the 2014 vintage. Today the vineyards cover ten hectares: 80% Saperavi and 20% Rkatsiteli, with vines of 8, 15 and 45 years. Of the Soviet-era plantings only the healthy vines were kept; the rest were uprooted and replanted on selected rootstocks. The vineyard has been farmed organically under CAUCASCERT to the Green Caucasus standard since 2014, and from the 2018 vintage the wines and chacha are labelled organic.

The marani holds 29 qvevri with a total volume of 36,000 litres, each between 1,000 and 1,500 litres. They stand on three terraces, the first arrangement of its kind in Georgia, so the wine moves from qvevri to qvevri by gravity, without pumps and without chemical intervention. The annual potential is about 35,000 bottles, and the wine and chacha travel to 25 countries. The «3 Qvevri Terraces» Saperavi 2017 scored 97 points at Decanter, and the Chinuri-Rkatsiteli 2018 made the Decanter Amber Champions top thirty orange wines.