Little ole wine drinker me. Georgia September 22

So here we are, start up the band, trumpet fanfare……………………….

……………………..It was time said our leader to sample some local wine at a family run winery in the small village of Kondoli.

I drink cider and gin, oh, and beer and rum, vodka too. I'm quite taken by a guinness as well. But wine?

Nah! Leave that to the posh people who prefer KFC over Macadees.

Ghvardzelashvilis Marani, produces a variety natural unfiltered wines following the ancient and traditional Qvevri winemaking methods.

Harvesting time, the skins, pips, stray stalks and leaves get pulped and poured in to the traditional clay Qvevri.

There are no additives nor sulfides slung in and the concoction is buried in the ground and left to ferment and age for half a year. The resultant wine is then scooped out and bottled.

The residue of slurry is itself scooped out and distilled to make Chacha, a Georgian grape vodka

It was like fire water, chacha-fucking-cha indeed.

It was interesting to see the bits and bobs in the winery whilst getting the low down on production

Hey, youngsters...... this is an original calculator, one step up from an abacus.

Well I think the chacha opened my taste buds and clouded my mind, it was time to succumb and partake of the wine.

No one told me to sip it and savour it; it disappeared, think jagerbomb, think shots.

I had to be given a refill to savour the tastes of strawberry, blackberries and thyme. Nope I just got a mouth drier than the teaspoon of cinnamon in the cinnamon challenge.

Georgian whites are, it seems quite amber in colour. Get this...... flower blossom, tropical fruit, pineapple, and ripe plum aromas. White peach and mango.

I am getting quite good at this, I shoved my nose in and got erm erm winey type scent, sipped it, little finger cockd at the correct angle. Fuck that was foul, I am sure I could easily run my car on this if petrol becomes scarce.

I declined a second glass

A final red to savour, sniffed and sipped, with a two further top ups of the glass.

A young juicy wine, with aromas and flavors of fresh red and black soft fruit with hints of pepper. The taste being virile and full-bodied, strong in tannin with a pleasant slight bitterness, and with a long pleasant aftertaste.

If you say so.

It is lucky I took the brochure to bring all these tastes and aromas to life for you, to me it just tastes of fruity booze.(think adding voddie to vimto).

I don't get all this wine snobbery.

Several bottles at 20 euros a tap were bought by my travelling companions, (and me).

Now hurry up and get back on the bus it is nearly beer o'clock

I now also drink red wine.