Pheasant's Tears, Quinta Red Blend, Kartli, Georgia

Georgia is where it all began, the wine revolution that is finally coming full circle and it's only taken 4000 years to do so. Wine making has come along way in that time but as technology advances we start to realise that what is really good about wine is the basics - grapes, simplicity and a gentle understanding of the earth and what it produces, helping us produce from it. This is where Georgia is once again ruling, the understanding that the old ways are the best ways and Pheasant's tears have certainly shown us tat.

John Wurderman was painting in a vineyard when a chance meeting with Gela Patalishvili took place and that is where the story begins. Gela and his family have been making wines for 8 generations and their wine is made the traditional Georgian method where the wines are fermented in Qvevri, very large clay amphora which are sunk into the ground with just their lids above, the Qvevri are also lined in beeswax and this technique really mastered the art of temperature control during fermentation. They chose the name Pheasant's tears as it refers to an old Georgian story where only the best wines are good enough to make a pheasant cry!! We have no idea either??

Quinta takes its name from a musical term describing a harmony in 5ths which is often found in Georgian Polyphony, this is a tannic wine but it's smoother than you'd imagine and not as heavy as you were expecting. Big red berry flavours similar to spicy damson and sloe