(Gerhard Ziegler)
Success sometimes makes people modest. Irakli Chkhaidze is a successful man – and modest, almost excessively reserved. He does not speak like someone who wants to illuminate his own story, but like someone who would rather talk about structures, markets, taste and movement. That also suits 8000 Vintages, his company, which also exhibits and sells Georgian wines in Berlin: the brand must be visible. A large photographic portrait of himself? Not necessary.
All right: so here we would rather show you his shop in Kreuzberg – and recommend paying it a personal visit when you have the opportunity. Because what is said in this conversation about Georgian wine, Europe and the shifting of entire markets has a very concrete location in Berlin.
Irakli's path in life did not lead straight to wine. After a career in the pharmaceutical industry and an MBA in Italy – at Bologna Business School, specialising in Food and Wine – the fateful yet fortunate venture then got under way. The “8000 Vintages” project proved so successful within an extremely short time that those investors who had initially hesitated or were unwilling to come on board were no longer needed.
It becomes clear within the first few minutes that Berlin is not a decorative outpost for Irakli. Berlin is function, tool and political direction all in one. He delivers the decisive sentence almost in passing, as if he were simply talking about delivery logistics. In reality, it contains an entire strategy.
“Our European hub is now Berlin.”
And immediately afterwards comes the second sentence, which sounds even simpler and precisely for that reason reveals so much. Anyone who wants not merely to talk about Georgian wine but actually to move it into Europe needs a real anchor point. For 8000 Vintages, Berlin has become exactly that: not a shop window, but a control centre. Deliveries are made from there, orders are organised from there, and the distance between Georgia and European customers is practically reduced from there.
“We supply our EU customers directly from Berlin.”
This logistics is not merely a commercial footnote. It stands for a reordering. Georgian wine is no longer regarded here as an exotic exception that one can only come across on holiday or by chance. It is orderable, repeatable and predictable. Irakli talks about shipping costs, reach and orders from many countries, even from Cyprus. All of this sounds technical. In reality, it is a form of arrival.
He also talks about the size of 8000 Vintages in an entirely unpretentious way. Four locations in Tbilisi, one in Batumi, one in Berlin – and behind them not a loud expansionist sound, but a very clear geographical idea. He formulates this direction in a sentence that one may calmly read as the political core of this conversation:
“At the moment, our path leads primarily towards Europe.”
That is more than the statement of a trader who has discovered a new market. It is almost a statement of position for modern Georgian quality wine as a whole. In this narrative, Europe is neither an accessory nor merely a matter of prestige. Europe is the space in which it will be decided what kind of Georgian wine will be visible in the future: the authentic, locally rooted, dry, characterful kind – or the style that was produced for other tastes for decades.
Before Irakli talks about exports, Russia or Europe, he describes what Georgian wine means within the country itself. Wine is not a marginal phenomenon or a luxury product for small circles in Georgia. It is deeply rooted in everyday life. The much-lamented “wine crisis” affecting Europeans does not apply to Georgia.
“Georgians drink a great deal of wine. They love wine.”
“There was a great deal of homemade wine. I believe almost every family had its own wine.”
This house wine is not merely a drink, but a cultural technique, a family practice and a kind of extension of domestic life. People here have gardens, vines grow there, and they may also have Qvevris, the clay amphorae sunk into the ground. This makes wine as self-evident here as pickling olives or bottling tomatoes elsewhere. That is precisely why the next point Irakli raises is so important: the domestic market is changing. The new generation has different rhythms, different professions and different amounts of time available.
“The new generation no longer makes house wine. For them, bottled wine is simply much more convenient.”
What was once a domestic commonplace gradually became a professional bottled-wine market. Families that had produced for themselves or their closest circle for decades suddenly realised that there was a market for precisely these wines.
“When we started in 2016, there were around 50 wineries.”
“Today we work with more than 500 wineries. And around 85 per cent of them are small family wineries.”
We can see that the professionalisation of Georgian viticulture is not initially taking place through large industrial units, but through small family businesses. This also has a political dimension. Producers of house wine become entrepreneurs. Family businesses emerge from the informal sphere and begin to see themselves as market participants. Not all of them will remain, Irakli also makes that clear. But many make the leap – and some of these small businesses are now among the best-selling wineries at 8000 Vintages.
It is also noteworthy that he describes the barriers to entry in Georgia as relatively moderate compared with Central Europe. There is bureaucracy, naturally. But at least according to his account, it does not seem to exert the massive braking force familiar from traditional wine-producing countries with dense regulatory networks.
“There is bureaucracy, of course – but it is not a major obstacle to setting up a business and making wine.”
This is particularly noteworthy from an Austrian or German perspective. There, viticulture is tightly circumscribed in legal and administrative terms – historically understandable, often economically sensible, but also intimidating for small new projects. In Georgia, the space for new labels, new bottles, new experiments and new market appearances seems to be greater. At the same time, Irakli naturally knows that this openness does not exist outside its time. If Georgia continues moving towards Europe, European rules will also draw closer. He puts it almost ironically and yet precisely:
“When Georgia moves towards Europe, you also get a gift – and that gift is European rules.”
There is no lament in this, but rather sober realism. Europe is a market, a hope and a quality space – but also a space of rules. And it is precisely here that the conversation shifts from pure industry observation to a broader political reading. For if Europe is the destination, the question of what will happen to Russia inevitably arises – the market that for decades was the obvious, sometimes almost self-evident point of reference for many Georgian producers. Irakli answers this question with remarkable openness. He first describes how Russia itself is increasingly focusing on cheap, functional wines, in other words products that cater more to mass consumption than to origin or depth. The interesting small family businesses from Georgia, he says, no longer have Russia on their radar.
“These small family wineries do not sell their wines to Russia.”
This is important because it corrects the often abbreviated notion that the Russian market is automatically the natural market for Georgian wine. That may have been true for a long time for part of the historic export trade. According to Irakli's account, it is precisely not true for today's self-confident quality wine. More than that: he explicitly points out that during the Soviet era and beyond, there were wines made for this market that did not represent everyday life in Georgia.
“During the Soviet Union, we produced wines for the Russian market. Wines that we ourselves did not even drink – semi-sweet wines.”
“Hardly anyone makes those anymore today..”
There are, of course, still semi-sweet wines, but what for a long time travelled along as a Russia-compatible export style does not represent the centre of Georgian drinking culture. If one speaks seriously about the country's future as a wine-producing nation, one must be guided by what Georgians actually drink – not by what was once demanded under imperial or post-Soviet market logics.
In this argument, Europe does not appear as political romanticism, but as a space that is a better sensory and cultural fit. Irakli emphasises that European and American consumers are looking for originality: skin contact, Amber Wine, Qvevri, Saperavi, in other words what is specifically Georgian. And that is precisely why he formulates perhaps the clearest sentence of the entire interview:
“The right market for Georgian wine is Europe.” If you want to export to Europe, you should simply make what Georgians themselves drink.”
This is remarkable because it constitutes a rejection of the old reflex of softening one's own identity for export. It is not less Georgia that should go into the glass, but more. Not more agreeable, but more precise. Not internationalised in the boring sense, but legible in the best sense. When listening to Irakli, one notices just how strongly certain terms have by now become markers outside Georgia itself. In the past, people in the West might have said “orange wine” and meant a broad direction. By now, he says, guests in Berlin are already learning different words.
“The first word is: Kvevri.”
“When people come in today, they no longer say ‘Amber Wine’. They say: Kvevri wine.”
“The second word is Saperavi.”
It is also interesting how Irakli talks about natural wine. He does not idealise the subject, even though Georgia is often perceived from outside precisely through this lens. Instead, he describes natural winemaking as both an opportunity and a risk.
“What does natural winemaking mean? No filtration, no added yeasts, no preservatives.” “But if a winemaker really masters it, these wines are magnificent.”
There is the same sobriety in this matter too: Georgia is no longer sold here as a mythical land in which every amphora automatically produces truth. Quality remains work. Natural wine is not good because it is minimally invasive, but only when the level of craftsmanship is high enough to bring stability, precision and expression together. Irakli does not deny that Georgia has particularly good conditions for this – but neither does he romanticise it.
For him, the picture of the modern Georgian wine country ultimately also includes wine tourism. Small family wineries that perhaps cannot yet make a living solely from selling bottles open their homes, cook, pour wine, organise harvest experiences and show guests the vines, cellar and kitchen. This agritourism is highly dynamic; new projects are constantly starting, and existing locations are being redesigned. Anyone planning a trip should search the web for new locations more or less up to date on the day.
In the end, the conversation becomes more personal. Almost as casually as he had previously talked about shipping costs, he tells us how his own path into this field began.