pop & pour

One of the strangest (and most captivating) bottles you’ll ever try. And it’s orange!

When I interviewed Tim Hendrickson of Wine Ink for last week’s PnP/CIA dual feature, I asked him what was the single weirdest bottle in his unique and eclectic collection of wares, knowing full well that I would likely be buying his response.  The answer was this bottle, the 2010 Kisi from producer Pheasant’s Tears.  What makes it weird?  Well, what doesn’t?  It’s made in Georgia (the country, not the state, although both would be equally weird, I suppose), which is no longer a known winemaking power but is the area of the world with the longest-known history of winemaking, dating back 8000+ years.  It’s a single-varietal wine from a grape, Kisi, that neither I nor the dozens of reference books in my house had ever heard of, a white grape indigenous to the Kakheti province of eastern Georgia, located near the Azerbaijan border.  However, as you can see in the picture at left, the wine is not really white at all, but a rather lurid shade of orange.  And oh yes — it’s fermented and aged by being buried in the ground in a giant clay egg.  Intrigued yet?  Just wait till you taste it. Read the rest of this entry »