Saperavi

Saperavi is Georgia's flagship red wine grape and one of the world's oldest cultivated varieties, grown for millennia in the eastern region of Kakheti. It is a true teinturier — rare among single-varietal grapes — with red pigment in its pulp as well as its skin, so it bleeds an almost opaque, inky purple-black wine. The result is a deep, intense, full-bodied red with bracing acidity, firm tannin and dark-fruit flavours of black plum, blackberry and dried fig. Hardy and cold-tolerant, it is traditionally fermented underground in beeswax-lined clay qvevri, a practice recognised by UNESCO, and yields powerful wines built to age for decades.