Structured, Clear Georgian Wine - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Wine of the Week

Structured, Clear Georgian Wine

by Tara Q. Thomas • December 14, 2020

Baia Abuladze

Baia Abuladze started her winery in 2015, when she was just 22, working with the help of her mother, Tamriko Ghaladze, and her siblings Gvantsa and Giorgi. Today, they farm nearly four acres, the majority of it planted to tsolikouri, considered Imereti’s top variety. Baia vinified this wine in three 1,500-liter qvevris, including only 30 percent of the skins, and racking it into stainless-steel tanks after a month. The result combines the firm structure of qvevri wines with the clarity and delicacy of a white aged in stainless steel. It’s clean and bright, with the savor and crunch of a russet apple fresh off the tree. You might also find hints of dried apricot and herbs around the edges. The flavors retain their freshness for days after the bottle is opened, seemingly impervious to oxygen; they also stand up well to rich dishes such as tartiflette, a potato dish larded with bacon and cheese.

Georgian Wine House, Beltsville, MD

93

Baia’s Wine 2019 Imereti Qvevri Wine Tsolikouri

$30

Where To Buy

Every week, our editors highlight a wine that intrigued them in our blind panel tastings, expanding on their tasting note in this space. These are entirely editorial choices; there are no paid placements. Subscribers can also access the original tasting note by searching h ere.

Tara Q. Thomas

is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.

This story appears in the print issue of December 2020.
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TAGS Republic of Georgia W&S December 2020

David Paradela
Associate Editor

David joined Wine & Spirits in 2021 after immersing himself in the world of wine at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally from Boston, he graduated from Boston University with a degree in English and completed a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2021. Prior to working at the magazine, he served as an editor and staff writer for the music blog Sound of Boston and worked in scientific publishing. Aside from wine, he loves basketball, arguing about Taylor Swift’s best album, and everything Greta Gerwig touches.

Corey Warren
Tastings Editor

Corey Warren moved to New York in 2015—fifteen years too late to join The Strokes—after earning a degree at Cornell in Comparative Literature. He started polishing glasses at Betony and threw himself into the restaurant world. Later, while a captain at Aquavit, he began working part time in the Wine & Spirits tasting department. Now, in addition to running tastings, he serves as critic for the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa. Corey likes almost anything bubbly, from Miller High Life, the Champagne of beers, to Champagne, the Champagne of Champagne, but he’ll drink anything once, and loves finding unique wines.

Tara Q. Thomas
Editor at Large

Since Tara Q. Thomas joined Wine & Spirits in 1997, she’s traveled the wine world from Argentina to Australia. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, with more than 20 years of experience in the food and wine world, Tara puts her culinary knowledge to use as W&S’s resident food critic, and is the critic for the wines of Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe, Argentina, and the Mediterranean. She’s particularly enthusiastic about the wines of Greece, where she once lived and cooked. Outside of W&S, Tara has authored two books, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wine Basics and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Wine; contributed to the Oxford Companion to Cheese as well as Oxford’s forthcoming volume on spirits; and writes a wine column for Culture: The Word on Cheese.

Patrick J. Comiskey
Senior Correspondent

A former sommelier, Patrick J. Comiskey serves as the W&S critic for all domestic wines outside of California—including New York, Oregon and Washington—and contributes articles on the wines and viticulture of these areas. His wine travels include regular visits to US wine regions, as well as trips to France, Italy, Germany and Australia. Comiskey’s writing credentials include contributions to the San Francisco Chronicle’s wine section, the Los Angeles Times, Bon Appétit and the Robb Report, and also teaches classes and moderates panels on viticulture, wine tasting and various wine regions. His recent book, American Rhône: How Maverick Winemakers Changed the Way Americans Drink (UC Press 2017), was shortlisted for the 2016 André Simon Food & Drink Book Award and 2017 Louis Roederer Domaine Faiveley Wine Book of the Year.

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As a retail buyer, Susannah traveled abroad extensively, especially in Italy and Greece, to learn the stories behind her favorite wines and then connect others with the vines and the humans that make them. She is excited to join W&S, since that is the magazine’s mission. Raised to be curious, she finds, after over 20 years in the world of food and wine, that she loves best how wine touches so many disciplines—history, language, geology, cuisine, biology, horticulture—keeping the quest for knowledge fresh every day.

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Editor and Publisher of Wine & Spirits since 1986, Joshua Greene began drinking wine with meals during a summer in Galicia, Spain, at the age of 13. In later years, he worked in wine shops in western Massachusetts and served as wine captain at Wheatleigh, a small inn in Lenox. After graduating from Princeton University in 1981, Greene pursued a career in magazines, focusing on the management of special-interest publications. His work with Wine & Spirits began on a consulting basis, eventually leading to his purchase of the magazine in 1989.

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Chloe Jenkins
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Patricio Tapia
Senior Correspondent

After graduating with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Patricio Tapia attended Bordeaux University in France, where he studied for a diploma in wine tasting and winemaking. Since then, he has visited wine regions around the world and authored several books, including his annual Descorchados, a Chilean wine guide; The Wines of Colchagua Valley; TodoVino and Wines for Great Occasions. Tapia is also the South American correspondent for The Oxford Companion to Wine, The World Atlas of Wine and Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book. For the past three years, he’s been a host on the El Gourmet channel in South America. At Wine & Spirits, Tapia is the critic for the wines of Argentina, Chile and Spain, and regularly contributes articles on these regions.