Friday, 11 March 2011

Unfamiliar wine in a strange container


I bought this wine in a wine shop in Shanghai a few years ago. It was a fun shape and the contents were different to say the least. This was a red wine made from the Saperavi grape from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Of course, the leather exterior was not the real container for the wine; there was one of these aluminized wine bags inside with a tap (if my memory served me right).

Saperavi is an old Gerogian grape, possibly the oldest, dating back to 5000BC. It is a teinturier grape, in that unlike other red or black grapes with colourless juice, its juice is red. (Other teinturier grapes have lighter coloured juice, say pink.) Saperavi wines are reputedly long-lived, up to fifty years. Of course I never waited for anything like as long. It was a nice slightly rustic wine, which could have matured into something quite impressive, had I the patience to wait rather a few more years.

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