In the village of Artana in eastern Georgia, two sisters tend a cellar founded by their great-grandfather and make wine the way Georgians have for thousands of years, in clay vessels buried in the ground.
Backstory
The estate grows out of the legacy of Dimitri Rcheulishvili, a pioneering Georgian winemaker who established a cellar on his land in Kakheti. In 2007 his descendants acquired the Artana property, and today it is run by his granddaughters Anastasia and Mariam, who have made organic wine here since 2014. The wines appear under the Gogo / ღVINO label.
The Region
Kakheti is Georgia's most important wine region, a warm eastern valley that is the cradle of the qvevri tradition. The qvevri method itself is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, a living link to a winemaking culture stretching back some eight thousand years. Kakheti is home to Saperavi, the country's great red, and a wealth of indigenous white grapes.
Vineyards & Farming
The vineyards are dry-farmed, relying on natural rainfall rather than irrigation, and the grapes are hand-harvested. Plantings center on Georgia's native varieties: the red Saperavi and Tavkveri alongside the whites Kisi, Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane. Working organically since 2014, the sisters let the vineyard, not the cellar, set the character of the wine.
Winemaking
Fermentation follows the old Kakhetian method, in qvevri, the egg-shaped terracotta vessels buried to the neck in the cellar floor. Yeasts are naturally occurring, fermentation is spontaneous, and after their time on skins in qvevri the wines are bottled without filtering or fining, with nothing added.
The Wines
The range expresses Kakheti's classics: a deeply extractive, structured Saperavi red with the grape's characteristic grip, plus amber and white wines from Kisi, Rkatsiteli and the red Tavkveri, all made in qvevri.
