Georgia revives failing grape varieties

Georgia is striving to recover unique and rare species of Georgian grape varieties and bring the disappearing grapevines back to life.

For this reason Georgia’s Ministry of Agriculture organised an event at Jigura Scientific-Research Centre of Agriculture where visitors sampled some of Georgian wines made with rare grape varieties.

The guests had the opportunity to taste over 20 wines of rare grape varieties.

The main goal of the event was to return the failing Georgian grape varieties to the market.

As the Minister of Agriculture Levan Davitashvili stated, the experimental base of research and planting materials for perennial crops of Scientific-Research Centre of Agriculture is located in Mtsketa municipality, in Jigura on 80 hectares.

The guests had the opportunity to taste over 20 wines of rare grape varieties. Photo by Georgia's Ministry of Agriculture.

There are 350 foreign and 437 Georgian varieties of vine species protected in the collective plantation, including a collection of unique and rare varieties of Georgian grape varieties, which had been retrieved for a long time.

Long ago, the above mentioned varieties were used for industrial purposes and the highest quality table wine was made of them. In order to return these varieties to the industry, the Scientific-Research Centre of Agriculture is conducting winemaking from rare varieties of vine and their research simultaneously with restoration of grape varieties,” stated the press-release published by the Agriculture Ministry.

The Centre was created in 2007.