Vardo 2023

George Wolski first experienced foot-treading on grapes at the age of three, under the guidance of his father. However, the family connection with the world of wine goes back two generations, as his grandfather, Alexander, planted the family’s first vineyards in 1962, with the intention of making wine for his own consumption, about 30 km from Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia. In 1984, his grandfather and father built the small family cellar, which enabled young George to learn how to grow vines and make wine. Yet, as fate would have it, he ended up studying for a doctorate in engineering and then an MBA at Grenoble Business School, which meant that for some time he held executive positions in communications companies.
After his father passed away in 2015, George inherited the cellar and the small family vineyards, and decided the following year to continue the family tradition of making wine, but this time with a commercial purpose. Self-taught, combining his knowledge of chemistry and biology with oenology, he cemented the knowledge he had acquired, bought more qvevris and vineyards adjoining those of the family, and now owns around 10 hectares in the Kakheti region, next to the Alazani river, on soils mostly of gravel and clay, exposed to a dry climate dominated by the Caucasus mountains.
In the vineyard, George’s main concern is the quality of the grapes. To achieve this, he sacrifices quantity, not using irrigation processes or any kind of fertilizer or phytosanitary products, and thus obtains a much smaller quantity of grapes than is usual in this region. Upon entering the cellar, the grapes are selected and those that are not considered suitable are used to produce a typical Georgian distillate, Chacha. As no chemical or sulphurous products are used in the cellar, hygiene is extremely important. That’s why all the objects that come into contact with the grapes, must and wine, in particular the vats and qvevris, are always properly sterilized.
Another challenge for George was to find a name for the winery. The choice fell on “Andrias Gvino”, where “Andrias” is the name of George’s son and “Gvino” means “wine” in a Georgian language. When little Andrias turned three, George let his son tread on grapes for the first time, just as his father had done with him. That moment with Andrias was recorded in a photograph that adorns all the labels of these admirable wines.