ABSTRACT
Georgian wine is characterized by its long history, embeddedness in unique landscapes and distinct culinary culture, high diversity of heirloom grape varieties unknown in the west and distinctive production techniques. Georgian wine culture has also proven itself to be extraordinarily resilient. Despite being a battleground on many occasions and experiencing revolution, dramatic land reforms, and other agri-economical shocks, vineyards have remained an enduring and distinguishing feature of the Georgian landscape and culture. This research explores the contours of the Georgian secret of its resilience, ascribing it to benevolent state interventions over long periods (top-down resilience) and local stubbornness (bottom-up resilience). This research also shines light on how this resilience manifests under current conditions, and it questions how it will fare in the future. In particular, it questions how Georgian wine will face the new challenges brought by (1) a capitalist, and now neoliberal capitalist, economy, including the growing demand in the Russian and Chinese markets for cheap wines; (2) the spread of Georgia’s positive wine reputation outside of its core in Eastern Europe; (3) and the increasing need to fight counterfeits and secure consistent quality of production. These challenges suggest why Georgians have rapidly embraced “modern” international tools such as geographical indication (GI). GI provides a technical framework for facilitating the encounter of Georgian wine in the world while emancipating producers who are critical to sustaining the particularities of the Georgian wine tradition. So far, GI has been a good tool for awareness building, combating forgery and maintaining high quality, which will be critical for developing Georgian wine’s position in the neoliberal market. In this, GI encapsulates many of the more general challenges of economic integration faced by Georgia. But whether GI can effectively and fairly “capture” the idiosyncratic Georgian wine tradition in its breadth and complexity is questionable. This paper draws attention to the advantages and contradictions that emerge when neoliberal pressure forces a foreign cultural and legislative framework onto a divergent set of production and consumption realities, and it questions how disruptive this may be to local wine traditions and producers.
