GeorgiaOfficial tourism
Kakhetian Traditional Winemaking

Where wine lives in clay

Kakhetian Traditional Winemaking

Why go

Kakhetian Traditional Winemaking stands as a living archive of humanity's oldest continuous winemaking tradition. In their Telavi headquarters, the company buries qvevri—enormous clay vessels—underground exactly as Georgians have done for 8,000 years, fermenting grapes with stems, skins, and seeds for months to produce amber wines of profound tannic complexity. This is not museum piece but working craft: visitors witness the full cycle from harvest crushing with wooden presses to the sealed, earth-insulated aging that UNESCO recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The experience strips away industrial wine's artifice, revealing how Georgia's Orthodox feast culture, its supra toasts, and its very identity grew from these clay roots. You taste history unfiltered.

On the ground See

  • Watch qvevri being sealed with beeswax and earth for winter fermentation
  • Taste the full range: white grapes fermented amber, Saperavi aged in clay, and rare grape varieties like Kisi and Khikhvi
  • Observe the traditional harvest crush using a wooden satsnakheli press in autumn

Practical Know before you go

Open year-round for tours by appointment; peak harvest visits September-October when crushing and qvevri filling occurs.

Last reviewed 25 August 2026 · reviewed quarterly