Pheasant’s tears

Sighnaghi, Kakheti

Pheasant’s Tears was established in the Khaketi region of Georgia in 2005 by John Wurdeman and Gela Patalishvili. John, a native of Virginia in the US, settled in Georgia after studying fine art in Russia. After many years collecting and archiving the ancient Polyphonic songs of Georgia John was approached by Gela with a plea to do the same for Georgia’s rare endemic grape varieties. And so, Pheasant’s Tears was born.

“The Georgian legend says that only truly great wine can make a pheasant cry.”

With limited resources the two set about buying their first vineyard and later building a cellar on the vineyard. Production at Pheasant’s Tears commenced in 2007.

All vineyards are managed organically, the vines tended by hand and the grapes hand-picked in the cool of the morning. The desire here is to express site through the chosen variety.

Grapes are crushed by foot in a wooden bath-shaped vat made from a hollowed-out log. It is then fed directly into the kvevri, a clay vessel lined with beeswax with a pointed bottom. Amber (orange) wines are made from white grapes aged for up to 6 months or more on skins and stems, while the reds take a more modern line of around 2-3 weeks on skins. The wines are fermented using natural yeast, then the opening of the kvevri is sealed and buried in sand. During extended skin contact the grapes and seeds collect in the pointed bottom. After maturation the kvevri is opened and the wine is drawn off its skin and seeds to another kvevri for further aging, or prepared for bottling. The wine sees no oak, fining or filtration.

These amber wines are some of the most profound wines in the world today. Intensely savoury, they have shed primary fruits for secondary and tertiary characters and typically carry more complexity than most red wines, and often as much tannin. These are soulful natural wines that possess an umami quality that pairs with an amazingly wide range of food. These are the original ‘orange’ wines made with the ancient Georgian knowledge that have inspired many of today’s iconoclastic producers such as Gravner.