Hacker News Reader

Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

They're very proud of it too, but having spent time in Tbilisi (strong recommend!), there's a very simple reason you can buy French and Australian wine at your local shop, but nobody has bothered to make sure there's a good selection of Georgian wine there.

View on HN

what _is_ that reason, out of curiosity?

It doesn't match the tastes of non-Georgian consumers, beyond being a (usually short-lived) curiosity

Germany and especially Austria produce some rather poor reds but have carved out a niche for Riesling and Gewürtztraminer. Is there a similar niche for Georgian wine?

Georgia makes wine in its traditional style or 'european' style. Traditional style is where the crushed grapes including branches is stored in clay pots (called Qvevri) for fermentation and aging. This means Georgian wines often have a different colour and can be cloudy.

European is the style of how most wine is made in Europe

The most famous style is Saperavi which is a Red wine.

I'm not who you asked, but the niche for Georgian wine is orange wine, which is white wine left to sit on the grape skins for a couple days, so it pulls more tannins. It's not exclusive to them alone, but the more distinct niche is orange wine aged in clay pots that gives it a distinct earthiness. If you appreciate understanding food anthropology, this is more similar to how wine was produced in ancient times, as opposed to a cabernet or modern varieties aged in oak or stainless steel.

You can usually find maybe one variety of orange wine in the US at larger wine stores with a substantial international selection.

You can also find orange (or skin contact) wine in the US at smaller boutique natural wine shops, which are becoming more common. Orange wines are cultivated in Sonoma and other wine regions in the US as well.

Totally off-topic but there are also white wines made with red grapes with white flesh by quickly separating the skins which is kind of the opposite.

“Rather poor reds”. Um what? Germany and Austria produce a lot of excellent wine, red and white.

Austrian reds are some of my favourites.

In London, Georgian orange wines are very popular and that seems to be what most people who are cursorily into wine would know them for here.

Sorry, I have to heartily disagree. There may be a few examples of good Austrian and German reds out there, but your chances of getting thin, acidic swill from a random bottle is way higher than with French or Californian reds.

(See also: East Coast US wines.)

I mean I can equally throw out the anecdotal evidence that I've found Californian wines in general intolerably sweet compared to their high ABV.

Without some more to back it up though we're both just being opinionated. The difference is that I'm admitting it.

It might also come down to to where you're based. If you're in the US, you might be getting worse German wines, in the same way that I'm probably getting worse California wines because I'm in the EU.

> Germany and especially Austria produce some rather poor reds but have carved out a niche for Riesling and Gewürtztraminer.

You're missing out on some rather nice German reds. You can definitely find some excellent Spätburgunders out there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com