Kisi

I tasted a wine made from the grape Kisi in last year's Wine Fair. This obscure grape from East Georgia is often made into wine by fermenting in Qveri clay vessels (see previous blog entries on these special wines here and here) in the traditional way. This apparently involves fermenting the grapes whole, skins, seeds, stems and all, in buried earthenware vessels for some 5 to 6 months with regular stirring! The modern way is then to let the wine then age for a further 12 months in oak, which is what happened to this sample I tried. Back to the grape, Kisi is a low yielding grape which tends to be fermented into off dry wines with tropical fruit aromas.

As for this wine, it was an orange gold with an aromatic slightly cardboardy nose, the palate was off-dry, a bit fruity with some clay notes. An astringent acid backbone left an astringent finish after the acid subsided.