Tsikhelishvili Wines Rkatsiteli

The tasting note from forceberry is perfect and I can 100% recognize the wine in it. In the score I lower, because the wine is too rustic, too inelegant me. Anyone looking for a wine for the intellectual challenge, will find it here, because this wine is complex and tells a rather unknown story.

This amber / orange wine made by 75-years old Aleqsi Tsikhelishvili is pretty much as classic as a Georgian skin-contact wine can get. The foot-trodden Rkatsiteli grapes are transferred to age in buried earthenware kvevris. The wine ferments and ages for a whopping 8 months with the skins before it is bottled. 13,7% alcohol. Deep orange to bronze color of a Tawny Port. Extremely funky and even downright odd nose with aromas of mushrooms, soft-ripened cheese's white rind, some musty …

The wine was medium copper in colour and offered floral notes, orange, citrus, tea and earthy notes on the nose and palate, followed by tobacco, some mint and some spice on the finish, with fresh, medium-level acidity, medium-level tannin and good length. Dry and tannic, but good balance and depth. The medium-bodied wine benefited from aeration. Very different. Fascinating.

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