სამეგრელო

North-western Georgia between the Enguri and the Tskhenistskali: the Colchis lowland and the foothills of the Egrisi range, humid Black Sea subtropics. Viticulture sits in the foothill belt — the municipalities of Martvili, Chkhorotsku, Tsalenjikha, Abasha, Senaki, Zugdidi and Khobi; the coastal plain is too wet for vines. The signature variety is Ojaleshi — Mingrelian for “growing on a tree”: for centuries it was trained maglari, up an alder or a persimmon, and picked late, in November. Thin-skinned and late-ripening, it gives light-bodied, high-acid wine; in Soviet times almost all of it went into semi-sweet. Alongside it survive the rare Chvitiluri, Koloshi and Dudghushi, counted in single vineyards rather than hectares. The region has exactly one appellation — Salkhino Ojaleshi, around the village of Salkhino in Martvili. The zone is tiny: the summer residence of the Dadiani princes, where Achille Murat and Salome Dadiani moved Ojaleshi off the trees into rows in the 19th century and began shipping the wine to France; at the 1912 Paris exhibition Salkhino Ojaleshi took gold. Today Ojaleshi is also grown well outside the registered zone — in Imereti, Racha and Kakheti — so the grape on a label says nothing about place, while the name Salkhino does.