The wines of Papari Valley

Papari Valley is a small winery run by the Kurdadze family from Georgia. They make natural wines according to the classic Georgian method: in the qvevri. The first wines were made in 2006, but it wasn't until 2015 that the Kurdadze family found their wines good enough to sell. Papari Valley's quality standards are high, but the effort pays off - Papari Valley's wines rank among the best natural wines of Georgia.

Check out our 2 wines made by Papari Valley

Papari Valley's wines are made by Nukri Kurdadze. Nukri is a physicist and has been active in Georgian wine his whole working life, but not as a winemaker. Just over ten years ago he decided to become a professional winemaker. He bought two hectares of vineyard in the province of Kakheti, on rolling hills called the Papari valley. 'Papari' means 'horse's mane' in Georgian, and the rolling landscape with the Caucasus in the background does indeed evoke that image. Nukri is helped by his wife and by his son Sandro - Sandro doesn't just help in the vineyard and cellar, he also designed the label for the bottles.

For Nukri it was clear from the start that he wanted to make natural wines: from organic grapes, with as little intervention by the winemaker as possible. The vineyards had to be prepared for that, which took more time than expected. Some plots had been 'sprayed flat' during the communist era. Nukri only planted the best sections, where nature had fully recovered.

Papari Valley now has 9.3 hectares of vineyard, most of it planted with Saperavi grapes and the rest with Rkatsiteli. The family has a clear goal in mind: to express the unique terroir of the Papari valley, without interfering with nature, without pesticides or herbicides, but according to the strict standards of organic viticulture. Some plots still have vines more than forty years old; the rest of the vines are between eight and fifteen years old. From this, Papari Valley can press a maximum of about 35,000 bottles of wine per year.

Nukri is a physicist, and that shows when you look in his cellar. He has come up with an innovation we haven't seen anywhere else. On three different levels in his cellar there are a total of 21 qvevri. In the top qvevri, the grapes are fermented into must. That must is then transferred by gravity to the qvevri on the lower levels to age. This way, Nukri still has some control over the wine's development - an innovation that pays off, since Papari Valley's wines are very pure and remarkably elegant. We currently have two wines from Papari Valley in our range. You can view all our wines from Papari Valley here.

If you want to know more about this winery, here you will find the link to the website of Papari Valley.