Great Georgian wines to lift your Easter feast
Easter lunch means lamb in one form or another for many of us, and nothing sets the flavour off better than wines made with the saperavi grapeM&S Found Saperavi, Kakheti, Georgia 2022 (£11, Ocado.com; Marks & Spencer) At a time of year when many of us are gearing up to prepare a lamb-based feast for Easter, the food and wine culture of Georgia offers a novel way of approaching a meal that is, for most of us, rather less hidebound by family traditions than Christmas dinner. This corner of the Caucasus has a distinctive culinary heritage, in which fresh herbs (tarragon, dill, coriander), nuts (as in the staple walnut paste nigvzis sakmazi used as a base for many dishes), fruit (such as sour plums and dried barbary/berberis berries), spices (fenugreek and the mix of fiery red pepper-based spice mix ajika) and the yoghurt-like fermented milk matsoni all play leading roles. Lamb, too, is widely used, not least in a leading contender for national Georgian dish, chakapuli, in which the meat is stewed with sour plums and herbs, providing layered, intensely vibrant-zingy flavours that go so well with the robust, darkly fruited, succulent reds, such as M&S’s Found bottling, made from one of Georgia’s many outstanding indigenous varieties: saperavi.Tbilvino Saperavi, Kakheti Georgia 2023 (£13.99, or £11.99 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, majestic.co.uk) Saperavi is an example of a subset of red grape varieties called teinturier that, unlike most of those used for wine, have red flesh as well as skins – an attribute that gives the wines an inky depth of colour with vivid dark juice that calls to mind a punnet of freshly picked blackberries. The wines often have a similar crunchy-black-berried exuberance, with acidity and grip that makes them a fine foil for cutting through the fat of lamb dishes of all kinds, not just those made in a Georgian style. Separavis to try whether your preparation features slow cooking and sweet Moroccan spicing or classic Sunday roasting with garlic and rosemary include Tbilvino’s fragrant example, which reminded me of a youthful southern French syrah with its slick of succulent dark fruit and hint of aniseed, and the seriously classy Orgo Saperavi a wine of gorgeously silky texture, with notes of aniseed, hibiscus and blackberries (the 2022 vintage is £21.50 at nywines.co.uk; the excellent 2023 is in shops soon). Continue reading...
Easter lunch means lamb in one form or another for many of us, and nothing sets the flavour off better than wines made with the saperavi grape
M&S Found Saperavi, Kakheti, Georgia 2022 (£11, Ocado.com; Marks & Spencer) At a time of year when many of us are gearing up to prepare a lamb-based feast for Easter, the food and wine culture of Georgia offers a novel way of approaching a meal that is, for most of us, rather less hidebound by family traditions than Christmas dinner. This corner of the Caucasus has a distinctive culinary heritage, in which fresh herbs (tarragon, dill, coriander), nuts (as in the staple walnut paste nigvzis sakmazi used as a base for many dishes), fruit (such as sour plums and dried barbary/berberis berries), spices (fenugreek and the mix of fiery red pepper-based spice mix ajika) and the yoghurt-like fermented milk matsoni all play leading roles. Lamb, too, is widely used, not least in a leading contender for national Georgian dish, chakapuli, in which the meat is stewed with sour plums and herbs, providing layered, intensely vibrant-zingy flavours that go so well with the robust, darkly fruited, succulent reds, such as M&S’s Found bottling, made from one of Georgia’s many outstanding indigenous varieties: saperavi.
Tbilvino Saperavi, Kakheti Georgia 2023 (£13.99, or £11.99 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, majestic.co.uk) Saperavi is an example of a subset of red grape varieties called teinturier that, unlike most of those used for wine, have red flesh as well as skins – an attribute that gives the wines an inky depth of colour with vivid dark juice that calls to mind a punnet of freshly picked blackberries. The wines often have a similar crunchy-black-berried exuberance, with acidity and grip that makes them a fine foil for cutting through the fat of lamb dishes of all kinds, not just those made in a Georgian style. Separavis to try whether your preparation features slow cooking and sweet Moroccan spicing or classic Sunday roasting with garlic and rosemary include Tbilvino’s fragrant example, which reminded me of a youthful southern French syrah with its slick of succulent dark fruit and hint of aniseed, and the seriously classy Orgo Saperavi a wine of gorgeously silky texture, with notes of aniseed, hibiscus and blackberries (the 2022 vintage is £21.50 at nywines.co.uk; the excellent 2023 is in shops soon). Continue reading...
