There is always a clash between idealists and pragmatists, gnostics and agnostics, those who live on instinct and those who dismiss it. That was evident as I sat with colleagues in the chapel that is the religious heart of the Alaverdi Monastery. It was during the First International Qvevri Symposium when a scientist from Germany took her place at the podium to deliver her talk. The problematic part of her discourse was when she held forth on the wisdom of using laboratory yeasts and enzymes to make wine.
The scientist was of the same mind-set as any scientist consulting to wine companies and recommending such additions to help make a more secure, dependable product, additions that quicken the process and ease the juice through fermentation in a more predictable way. The talk, which came off as dangerous and threatening to the very core of natural qvevri wine, provoked a rustle of emotion from the audience.
Alaverdi Monastery is a majestic presence nestled into the shadows of the purple Caucasus. Bishop Davit, metropolitan of Alaverdi, the very same Bishop Davit who had given his blessing for John to marry Ketevan, is its spiritual leader. Earlier in the day he had stood at the podium and welcomed us into his monastic home. He cut a profound figure with his wiry long beard, his black clerical robes, and his searching eyes full of — was that mischief? Yes. It must have been. For one thing, I knew there was an iPhone in his pocket. I also knew that before he had turned to God and spent a decade living in caves in devotion, he had had a life studying architecture, living with his wife, an actress; there were even children. But then he had embraced celibacy as he delved deeper into religion and his own special preservation of ancient arts, including wine.
Wine for him was transportational and ultimately intrinsic to the church. When he had arrived at Alaverdi, entrusted with resurrecting it, he had discovered that making wine was an intrinsic part of its history. During the rebuilding of the monastery, excavations had unearthed an outstanding cellar of old qvevris of different sizes dating back to 1011. In 2006, the year before John and Gela started their winery, the bishop started Alaverdi’s. He did this with funding from one of the country’s largest wineries, Badagoni. Unlike what the bishop advised John to do — that is, make wine in qvevri — the winemakers at Alaverdi initially made wine both in qvevri and in barrels. But now that’s changed. History and preservation of ancient arts is essential to the bishop, and the winery now concentrates on wine made from the buried vessels. And on the label is the notation, “Since 1011.”
The monastery has also acquired vineyards and planted its own vines where previously it had bought the grapes. On its website it links its wine to God: “Since ancient times till now the Alaverdi Monastery wine has carried the praise to God. Wine heals the soul and the flesh, gives strength to thank the Creator, and brightens your mood; enjoy and share the splendor of Georgian royalty and the glory of the monks’ modesty.”
The bishop has made traditional and natural wine a mission of the church — so much so that he saw the need to sponsor a conference. He explained: “The church and wine are intertwined because you can’t conduct a service without wine — a symbol of Christ’s blood.” But that doesn’t begin to convey the amount of commitment it took to plant vines, resuscitate the wine cellar, and try to establish a school to further the traditional arts. After all, the Catholic Church has sacramental wine, and the Vatican has an extensive wine cellar, but the idea that a religious order would support a wine conference is quite a stretch. Wine is essential to Judaism. It’s blessed and sipped on the Sabbath and at every important ritual, such as circumcision and marriage, but were the vines ever essential to the culture and would rabbis ever see it as essential to support a wine conference to keep their tradition alive? No. But there I was in the midst of drinking monks and bishops. They were enjoying and (most of all) preserving the ancient traditions.
During the commotion the German scientist had created after discussing yeasts, arms shot up. And one hand shot up before the others. It was that of the oenologist for the monastery’s winery. The man, who bore something of a resemblance to a more kindly Gorbachev, came to his feet. I saw he was proudly wearing traditional garb; a sword rested on his hip. He started to speak, and his voice shook with emotion. He attacked the researcher as if she were a heretic. “Are you saying that God did not provide the grape with everything it needed to make wine? There are no bad yeasts.”
This “We are all God’s children” approach to winemaking was new to me. While I tend toward the agnostic, I was impressed that this man believed in the concept of the balance in nature as being close to God. Start with healthy grapes. Embrace all of the yeasts, including those that initially give off flavors and funky aromas. After all, in any community you need diversity to create the whole in the most complex way. I had absolutely never heard a religious argument for making wine naturally, and it was nothing short of thrilling. Others thought so too. The man was given resounding applause.
So where did this connection between religion and wine in Georgia come from? I certainly see wine as spiritual, but in Georgia it is so deeply embedded into this deeply religious country that it is almost knit into its theology.
The Georgians were once deeply pagan, and the cult of Dionysus was rampant by the time Christianity came in. That’s when, in the first half of the fourth century, Saint Nino was visited by the Virgin Mary, who gifted her with a grapevine saying, “By the strength of this cross, you will erect in that land the saving banner of faith in my beloved Son and Lord.”
The belief is that the young Nino cut the vine in two, lopped off her long braid, and used it to plait the vines into a cross. Then she carried it with her along with the gospel to Georgia (Kartli or Iberia, as it was called back then), where it became a symbol of survival. There are persistent stories about soldiers in ancient times. Before they went into battle, a piece of vine was threaded into their chain mail and tucked close to their hearts. When a soldier went down, not long after the point of death, the grape vine started to grow, straight through the aorta. Life ends and life begins. This is the kind of apocryphal story that surfaces, whether it is a date tree growing through the heart of an Israeli soldier or a grapevine in ancient Georgia. It speaks to the emotions of the people (and even to me, through my own penchant for cynicism).
Zedashe is what the Georgians call sacramental wine. Where church wine is historically awful, in Georgia it was supposed to be the purest and the highest quality. In most traditional wineries there was always one qvevri dedicated to sacramental wine and intended for donation to churches, as well as for use during holidays. It was Giorgi Barishivilli who told me that making zedashe required special care, with more stirring while fermentation was going on. Also it was only red wine; a blending of the grapes was not allowed — a prescript that makes me wonder if it was religion that originally brought in the concept of separating the red grapes from the white — even though it took centuries and modern marketing to make it a booming trend. The old way, worldwide, had been wine from a blend.
The Catholic Church has a long history of protecting the vine. The most famous example is that of the medieval monks of Burgundy, who carefully mapped out their vineyards and realized what should be planted where. They tended the vines, they made the wines, and they also banished grapes they felt didn’t belong on northern Burgundy soil.
But Georgia took its devotion to wine to another level and did so a whole lot earlier.
On several occasions I took the twenty-minute drive from the city of Telavi to the Ikalto Monastery, more to soak in the memories of the past (it had once been a thriving center of thought) than for any connection to religion.
Outside the cloister are the requisite craftspeople selling religious icons or prayer beads. Inside it was lush and wild. Built in the sixth century, the monastery became a cultural and intellectual center, not only for Kakheti in eastern Georgia but also for the entire country. In addition to courses on enlightenment, philosophy, astronomy, and, of course, theology, there were courses in crafts, chanting, and, yes, winemaking. It was where the poet Shota Rustaveli is believed to have studied. I love walking through the peace, through the neglected qvevris, moss covered and abandoned.
In its day each monk was allotted a hefty amount of wine per day for drinking. But in 1616 the Iranian invaders, led by Shah Abbas II, devastated the area, sacked Ikalto badly, and burned the church. The school ceased to exist, though the site remained a tiny if important house of worship.
Today it is tended by Father Zakari and his parish, under the leadership of Bishop Davit. People come to this place, where the wind always seems to gently blow, to soak in the peace and contemplate in the sweet chapel. Ikalto is evidence of a once-thriving wine culture in the extensive series of ancient qvevris.
The revival of Alaverdi as an icon of culture has become a passionate project for Bishop Davit. The idea is to make this a center for the teaching of traditional winemaking and qvevri making, as it once was. As the bishop told me, “Everything that man does with his hands is guided by God. If not the church, who will represent the past?”
To “represent the past” is one of the best purposes of religion that I’d ever heard. Perhaps that’s why the bishop allowed his young monk winemaker, Father Gerasime, to travel to France, England, and Italy to show the monastery’s wines at tastings in very unlikely settings for monks. Such was the case at the London Real Wine Fair, when a troupe of Georgian natural winemakers came for their very first time.
Father Gerasime is a beautiful man with sleepy eyes and a peaceful demeanor that belies his thoughtfulness and intensity. After he had showed the wines for hours at the fair, cutting a dashing figure in his black robes, we headed out to find some food and found ourselves near midnight in an Indian restaurant. As I sat beside him, so close to the black scratchy wool of his robes, I thought about that garb and its purpose. Was it not a little bit like a qvevri? Doesn’t the use of the qvevri free up the ego from winemaking in the same way the robes free up clergymen from the ego of dressing and presenting themselves to the world in accordance with someone else’s desire? Yes, he said, that was it exactly.
I then asked him if he had always been certain he wanted to give up worldly connections and devote himself to God. He told me he had always been sure he wanted the monastic life, except for one reservation: his burning desire to make wine.
His family had always vinified, and he felt that, second to God, making wine was his lineage and another kind of calling. Father Gerasime told me that his father’s favorite activity was vine and wine. “He was never happier than when he made others happy. He never let guests from the city go without wine. If he was going to the city, he always took wine and other products from the village. He could play Georgian folk instruments; he sang traditional Georgian songs. We rarely had a week without guests. I was brought up in such a hospitable family. I helped my father as much as possible. After his death I felt obliged to continue that love and tradition. I took his grafting knives and started to graft vines and make wines. I took care of the vineyard and made wine in qvevri.”
He started the ecclesiastical life. The priest who took his confession tasted the young man’s wine and liked it so much that he was given the task of making the Church’s wine. “This lasted three years, until I decided to go to the monastery.”
When he entered Alaverdi as one of its novices, a devoted man who would live there, keeping up the monastery and deepening it as a religious center, Father Gerasime kept his craving to make wine a secret, as he saw no possible outlet for his desire. Alaverdi has been coming to life in the twenty years since the fall of Soviet rule, and with it so has a winery in the tradition of long ago. Father Gerasime said, “One day, a few years back, the bishop called me in to see him. He told me I would be in charge of the winery. I was silent for a long time, and the bishop said, ‘You have to speak up. Are you happy with this decision?’ I was speechless because it was what I had wanted to do my whole life. But I was sure I was going to have to sacrifice it when I became a monk.”
Father Gerasime’s face took on a beatific glow as he sat with his fork about to go into a chunk of mattar paneer. Like so many events in Georgia, his seemed ruled by fate.
“The vine requires hard work, care like for a child, and gentle treatment,” he said. “Wine must be made wholeheartedly, with love, in the hope for God’s grace. Wine shall be drunk at weddings, at a son’s birth, at a funeral repast, to receive guests, for the joy of heart, as a gift to God and glory. Our bishop says, ‘Wine for me is a strength in belief, inspiration in the love of my homeland, a force and firmness in the battle. Wine is everything for us — conscience, truthfulness, fairness, and courage.’”
Many religions have wine as a symbol; in the religion I was born into, Judaism, there is no shabbos meal or celebration without wine for a blessing — from weddings to births. There are strict rules on how to grow grapes and how to make wine. Certain holidays must be marked by wine, as in Passover, when four cups must be drunk at the seder. In some instances towns made it exclusively, such as Sagrantino, which was the sacramental wine for Umbria. Yet nowhere in the modern world is there a nation like Georgia, with this concept of wine — a fire coursing through its veins — as well as a place so close to God.
The nuns did the cooking during the conference, and good cooks they are. This is where I first encountered danduri, purslane. Purslane is a lemony wild green that grows out of the cracks of New York City sidewalks and in organic vineyards in Georgia everywhere. This recipe is just another showcase for never-ending variations of walnut sauce, and you can try it with any green — wild creeping purslane, spinach, or lamb’s quarters. But purslane is particularly fine for this recipe, as it is so firm that it maintains texture.
1 pound purslane
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 bulb garlic, finely chopped
1 cup ground walnuts
handful of cilantro
1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1 teaspoon blue fenugreek
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper powder
1 teaspoon marigold flower powder
1 tablespoon lemon juice (or to taste)
salt and pepper to taste
Cut the purslane into 3- to 4-inch pieces. Blanch for 1 minute in boiling water, then put in cold water and then drain. Blend the vinegar and garlic together. Take 1 heaped tablespoon of the garlic and vinegar mixture and add to the walnuts and the remaining ingredients. Blend together using a mortar and pestle; add lemon, salt, and pepper to taste. Slowly add boiling water until it is a thin paste/thick sauce. Mix with the purslane. Chill.