The great amber grape. Rkatsiteli — "red stem" in Georgian, for the reddish cane that carries its bunches — is the white workhorse of a country that has made wine for some eight thousand years, and the classic raw material of its signature method: fermented whole, with skins and stems, in qvevri, the clay vessels buried to the neck, it emerges as deep amber wine with the tannin of a red — dried apricot, walnut skin, black tea.
Under the Soviet Union it became the empire's most planted white grape, spread from Ukraine to Central Asia, mostly for undistinguished purposes. History turned again: when the natural-wine movement went searching for ancient method, Georgia's buried jars were waiting, and the skin-contact tradition of Rkatsiteli became a world influence.