A Georgian woman brings her passion to winemaking
First of Three Parts
Despite growing up in Kakheti, a well-known wine region and the agricultural heart of Georgia, Sophio Khutitdze saw herself as a doctor.
She was always drawn to the sciences with chemistry and biology being her favorite classes in high school. She even applied to medical school and took the national exam, but she slowly started to realize that medicine wasn’t for her.
Looking for a new vision for her life, where she could combine her loves for science and nature, she decided to enrol at the Agricultural University. When it came time to choose a specialization―agronomy, winemaking, chemistry, or biology, she chose viticulture and winemaking.
Now at 25 years old, she works as a viticulturalist and winemaker for a private wine company in the vineyards of Kakheti, managing 40 hectares of grapevines.
She saw that just like humans, wine is formed by biology and science. “Wine is a living product―shaped by yeast, biological processes and carefully coordinated vineyard management practices.”
And for her that meant starting at the beginning, the building blocks of wine: grapes.
“To make quality wine, you need quality grapes. That starts in the vineyard.”
She turned to winemaking with the same scientific approach that she had in school.
“I focus on learning every day and applying new approaches in both the vineyard and the cellar,” she adds. Her work depends on the season: monitoring growth and disease control in spring, managing pests in summer, overseeing harvest and fermentation in autumn and planning for winter vineyard care.
Six hectares of the vineyard she manages are already organic, and she plans to help convert the remaining 34 in three years. She emphasizes the link between viticulture and winemaking: “A winemaker must know their raw material. High-quality grapes are the foundation that lead to good wine.” (To be continued)
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