Iberieli Saperavi Kakheti 2022

Regular price: $27.50
Regular price
Sale price: $27.50

This Iberieli Saperavi 2022 just won a TexSomm Gold award — crowned blind by our nation’s best and brightest sommeliers at this esteemed annual conference. The wine is fresh yet dark, brooding but also vivacious, like wild peak-summer bramble berries mashed over bell peppers and crushed granite… and it’s “natural”: farmed organically, hand-harvested and manually de-stemmed, native yeast fermented on a smaller proportion of skins and aged in qvevri for 11 months, no fining, no filtering, a skosh of sulfur at bottling and that’s it.

The result is an all-around snappier style of Saperavi that still shows the grape’s classic black fruit and earthy depth but does so with a little more lift, levity and liveliness.

Pair with roast duck and game, smoky eggplant, sage-scented brothy beans, cumin meatballs, football games and full moons rising.

About the Winery

Iberieli Winery has vineyards and production in two regions of Georgia: Kakheti in the East and Guria in the West. Zurab Topuridze, founder and winemaker, is a co-founder of the Natural Wine Association of Georgia; with his team and family, he produces some of the very best wines in Georgia, all according to strict natural and highest quality standards.

Tasting Notes

Taste of macerated raspberries, blackberry, bell paper. Long finish with mineral sensation

Winemaker Notes

After manual harvest, Zurab and his team crush and press the red-skinned, red-fleshed Saperavi grape (a teinturier), pulling the juice off its skins, seeds and stems before adding back just a few bucket-fulls of must to the juice fermenting in qvevri. After two weeks, he removes this must, as well, to allow the wine to age without skins for its last 11 months. Malolactic fermentation is completed naturally.

Vineyard Notes

The Saperavi grapes for this wine are from Iberieli’s vineyard located on gently sloping alluvial hillsides in the village of Tsinandali, in the prestigious Teliani Appellation of Georgia’s famed Kakheti Valley. Vines are planted at 480-490m (1600 feet) on sandy, clay loam with alluvial stones. Viticulture is wholly organic in accordance with the criteria of the Natural Wine Association of Georgia.

Organic fertilization.
Copper based contact fungicides and biological fungicides and insecticides (e.g. Bacillus Subtrillis);
Irrigation only if draught.
Trellis, vertical shoot positioning, grown mainly on bilateral cordons or arched canes.

Sandy clay loam with river stones (alluvium)
Slope-facing to south-east. Elevation 480-490 m

Technical Details

Winemaker(s): Zurab Topuridze
Varietal Breakdown: Saperavi (100%)
ABV: 13.5%
SO2: free 14, total 39mg/L
Fermentation: Qvevri, skin contact tradition, native yeast
Filtration/Fining: Unfiltered/Unfined
Bottles Produced: 2310