Iago Chinuri 2024

Written By Campbell Mattinson

Iago Chinuri 2024
12.5% alcohol, cork, Kartli/Georgia.

This chinuri – made by benchmark Georgian producer Iago Bitarishvili – did not spend time on skins but was of course fermented and matured in (buried) qvevri.

The first thing you notice is the intensity of the fruit itself, which is well above the norm. This gives the wine real presence, and no doubt helps with the wine’s eventual length, which is noteworthy. Normally, when I use the word “layers” I’m referring to flavours; this though is a wine with layers of texture. As this wine breathes the grape flavours themselves markedly but not in a tutti fruity way; indeed nothing like it. This wine had me thinking of crushed rocks, flowers and salts, vanilla pods and brioche. In short it’s a wine of elegance, intensity and mouthfeel, the latter a world in itself.

2024 is an excellent vintage in Kartli, and it’s on display here.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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