Georgian women venture into wine production
Tbilisi, Apr 16 (EFE).- Traditionally reserved exclusively for men, women in Georgia are now successfully venturing into wine production in the country known among researchers as the cradle of wine.
“Wine has always been considered to have a masculine character, but we have decided that it has a woman’s soul,” Manana Ajvlediani, president of the association of women winemakers and owner of the Madam Wine cellar, told Efe.
She had worked in a wine company taking care of legal and financial matters until she decided to make a drastic change six years ago. “When I turned 55, I decided to change my life.
“For hundreds and thousands of years, women were not allowed to enter the ‘marani’, the warehouses where wine is stored. I asked myself: why? It is unfair. And I decided to create my own company,” Ajvlediani said.
The aim was to produce wine for women of different professions, ages and characters in a country where it is believed that wine was first made some 8,000 years ago.
The men in her family were initially skeptical of her plans, but now they consult her about wine.
The first bottles produced by her winery were sold in Estonia through social media and currently it is also consumed in Poland and Switzerland.
In the eastern region of Kakheti’s Telavi city, winemaker Ketevan Adalashvili follows a thousands-year-old technic to produce wine in her own backyard.
“I was the only girl who studied wine technology at the universities of Tbilisi and Telavi,” Adalashvili told Efe.
In 2017, she founded a small company, Ketewine, in which her father, mother and sisters participate in.
“I have exported 5,000 bottles of wine to Poland and Germany and I plan to expand production. But always emphasizing quality,” she said. EFE
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