“Georgia on My Mind” in Kenya

The majority of wine sold in Kenya is made from one or more of the famous-five grape varieties: cabernet sauvignon, merlot and shiraz for the reds and chardonnay and sauvignon blanc for the whites. In other wine markets of the world the phenomenon of ABC (any thing but chardonnay/cabernet) is well known. The more adventurous wine drinkers have turned to other grape varieties to titillate their taste buds. In response to changing tastes and new demands, wine makers increasingly provide wines made from new grape varieties in a plethora of combinations. Most of these varieties with rare exceptions are in fact anything but new. Instead, they are old varieties often long neglected that have been rediscovered, dusted off, sometimes given a marketing makeover and sent forth to jostle for shelf space with their more well known grape cousins.



Relatively new to drinking wine, Kenyan consumers are tentatively joining the grape variety treasure hunt. The world’s wine megabrands all present in Kenya supply wines made more or less from one or more of the famous-five grape varieties. The priority for Kenyan wine drinkers as is perhaps the case all over the world is not so much what is the wine made from, but of much more importance is does it taste good and is the price right.

My interest in grape varieties was stimulated recently by two events. The first was a bottle of wine given to me by a friend. The wine was a bottle of Teliani Valley Tsinandali 2011 from Georgia. Tsinandali is a village within the Kakheti region of south-eastern Georgia. For wine enthusiasts Georgia is interesting not least because it is the part of the world where many scholars believe that wine making originates some 5000 to 6000 BC. I must confess that I am not over familiar with Georgian wines and reading the back label on the bottle I learned that the wine was made from the grape varieties Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane.

Coincidentally I also received recently a copy of Wine Grapes by Jancis Robinson et al. This remarkable tome, all 1,241 pages of it and weighing in at over 3 kilograms, is for this wine geek a delight. Beautifully illustrated with plates from Ampélograhie by Pierre Viala published in French between 1901 and 1910, Wine Grapes provides descriptions for 1,368 vine varieties. I will not regurgitate the entries for the Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane varieties; suffice it to say they are comprehensive. Rkatsiteli though has a particularly interesting pedigree being one of the world’s oldest vitas vinifera (wine-bearing grapes) vines. Oeno-archaeologists a word that for some reason makes me smile claim that clay vessels containing Rkatsiteli seeds dating back to 3000 BC have been found in Georgia. Some biblical scholars claim that Rkatsiteli was the first vine planted by Noah after the flood, which I guess means it can tolerate high soil moisture content. Apparently after the waters subsided at the end of the Flood and according to the bible, ‘Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank the wine, and was a drunken.’ I guess Noah had been pretty busy and this ancient viticulturalist needed a bit of relaxation.

As for the Teliani Valley Tsinandali wine well it was delicious. The colour of the wine was pale straw with a light floral or stone-fruit nose. On the palate apple or quince flavours, crisp acidity and ripe fruit although finishing dry. A little more research indicated that the wine is made predominantly from the Mtsvane variety used because it gives fresh citrus aromas, tropical fruit flavours, but with crisp acidity. One other interesting note is that the Teliani Valley Tsinandali wine is made using the traditional clay qvevri. Qvevri-like containers have become increasingly popular in many parts of the world with winemakers believing it to be a more natural way of making wine. For the Georgians it would seem it is just the way to make wine.