Saperavi, Igoeti, Georgia | This sassy light-bodied red drinks like a Beaujolais for people who have read Infinite Jest. Tough as nails Saperavi grapes thrive in the cool and breezy Georgian region of Khashmi, whose clay and limestone soils give the wine a brisk minerality that feels like waking up refreshed and rarin’-to-go after a much-needed catnap. With its savoury, earthy notes of red beet and fresh tarragon, Nita is evocative of the first, very-earliest days of spring, when the world is still kind of muddy and grey but the scent of fresh green is in the air and everyone has a skip in their step full of post-winter hope. Semi-carbonic maceration and fermentation in quevri (which helps preserve the purity of the fruit) gives Nita its Beauj-adjacent glow, with bright sapy flavours of wild strawberry, beetroot, seedy raspberry and tart red cherry. Drink while wearing horn-rimmed tortoiseshell reading glasses on a late winter Sunday for maximum experiential impact. Enjoy lightly chilled!

Tsitska, Tbilisi, Georgia | Like a stroll through your garden after the first frost. Winemaker Bastien Warskotte came from a wine-growing family in Champagne and travelled to work at wineries around the world—including Nova Scotia’s very own Benjamin Bridge – to gain experience & expand perspective. Their name means ‘two wineries’, a play on their use of both classic Georgian qvevri (clay amphora pots) & classic French oak. Bastien sources his fruit from small family growers that exclusively practice organic vineyard management. A direct press of thick skinned Tsitska grapes, which in upper and central Imereti is mostly used for champagne method wines. ‘Anuka’ is fermented with wild yeasts before aging in a mix of old oak barrels (80%) and quevri (20%) for nine months of rest. Herb candies, winter melon, goats licking a salty cliff, white-blueberry yoghurt, cucumber icee pop & gentle cooling mint. Pour alongside breakfast for dinner!

Rkatsiteli, Imereti, Georgia | Let’s be real, Georgia is the orange AKA skin-contact wine capital of the universe and although the recent reinvigoration of the style has given it a certain du jour quality, qvevri-aged, skin contact wine originated in the country 8000 years ago! If you’ve never had the pleasure, Georgian wines are imbued with a deep sacrosanct energy that makes you feel like you’re drinking something truly mystical. Rkatsiteli, the most classical of Georgian white grape, is macerated on its skins in qvevri for 20 days, then pressed & racked to more clay qvevri and old French oak barrels. There is a beautiful balance between the freshness & acidity preserved by qvevri and the richness imparted by oak. The nose revs up with a hit of sandalwood oil so intoxicating a whiff would literally stop a stranger in their tracks. Black tea leaves, aniseed, menthol, dried apricot, almond and hazelnut round out the palate. If this wine were a person, it would be Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Pair with fragrant Moroccan tagine and heaps of gold jewelry.