Ori Marani, Georgia
Nino Gvantseladze, General Manager of the Ori Marani winery, Georgia. Click to expand. Picture copyright Campbell Mattinson.
The thing about elegance is that it allows you to stop and it allows you to breathe. In that sense elegance is an enabler. This thought came to me at a stand-up tasting in Tbilisi in Georgia recently, where fifteen or maybe twenty producers had a set of wines there for us to taste. I was probably twenty wines into this tasting when I stepped to the table of Ori Marani. I’ve never tasted a wine of this producer before. The first wine was called Ori Marani Canon du Coach Olympique 2024. It’s a sparkling wine made by Ori Marani’s winemaker, Bastien Warskotte, with Chinuri, Goruli Mtsavne and Shavkapito grapes. The first words of my short note were: elegance has entered the building.
It was only then that I realised that elegance had been hitherto absent. Bastien Warskotte is originally from Champagne. He makes wine in Georgia because it’s the home of wine and also because Georgia is the homeland of his partner, Nino Gvantseladze (pictured). Nino is Ori Marani’s General Manager. The other words I wrote about the Canon du Coach were: Pure, dry, tannic, intense and elegant. Savoury quaffability. It’s not going to change your life but it is a ripper drink.
I only tasted three Ori Marani wines but every one of them was a hit. They are made using traditional Georgian techniques but, perhaps, with a Champagne sensibility. I particularly liked the Exile on Caucasus 2023, matured in both qvevri and old oak and made with the (white) rkatsiteli grape. The 2022 of this is available in Australia so you’d imagine that this 2023 will follow. Nino described this wine as “entry level” but it presents as classier than that. Again it’s elegant. This wine gets the mix of chalk, fruit, savouriness, juice and texture so very right and does it so very well. It’s a meaty white, with fruit, with energy.
The wine that really pulled the Ori Marani room together for me though was called, I think, Demain c'edt Loin Shavkapoti 2023. I say I think because finding details on these wines is difficult (bottle below). Shavkapoti is the key word here, as it’s the grape variety. My notes say 12% alcohol, super fresh, super drinkable, frisky red, cherries with a keen savoury/spicy edge. Not stemmy. A wine for drinking not thinking in a way but so very distinctive, not to mention more-ish. The red wines of Georgia can be inky and intense but this is more lightness and verve.
