Rkatsiteli

Rkatsiteli is Georgia's most planted white grape and one of the oldest cultivated varieties anywhere. Grape pips found in the South Caucasus push winemaking in the region back some eight thousand years, and Rkatsiteli belongs firmly to that lineage — it has been grown in Kakheti, the country's eastern wine region, for as long as records exist.

What makes it distinctive is not the grape so much as what Georgia does with it. In the traditional method the fruit is crushed and put into a qvevri, a large egg-shaped clay vessel buried to its neck in the floor of the cellar, along with skins, stems and pips. Fermentation happens spontaneously; the wine then stays on those solids for months. The qvevri's shape encourages the solids to settle, and the surrounding earth holds the temperature steady without any intervention.

The result is amber rather than white: tannic, dry, and aromatically completely unlike a conventionally made wine. Quince, dried apricot, walnut, black tea, orange peel and a distinctly resinous, herbal edge. There is real grip on the finish, and the wine is served at cellar temperature and treated like a red.

Made in the modern European way, in steel and off the skins, Rkatsiteli is a crisp, high-acid white with green apple and white peach — perfectly decent, and beside the qvevri version somewhat beside the point.

It was planted on a vast scale across the Soviet Union and is still found in Ukraine, Moldova and Russia, as well as in small quantities in New York's Finger Lakes, where its cold-hardiness suits the winters.