Nikoladze Marani

The family

Giorgi Nikoladze went to Tbilisi to study engineering in 1998 and came back eleven years later because his grandmother could no longer lift the lid off the qvevri on her own. He has been making the wine since, in the same eight vessels his great-grandfather buried in the floor of this marani, and his mother Nino still decides when the grapes come in.

The family works two hectares on the slope above Kurdghelauri, most of it Rkatsiteli planted in the 1960s and never grafted over. Nothing is added and nothing is taken out. The wine spends six months on the skins because that is how long it took his grandmother, and Giorgi has never found a reason to argue with the result.

They are used to visitors who arrive knowing nothing at all, and Giorgi rather prefers it that way.