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MUSEUM

French museum raises a glass to ‘cradle of wine-making’ Georgia

France's Cite de Vin museum will toast Georgia's 9,000-year history as the global birthplace of wine-making in a new exhibition from Monday.

French museum raises a glass to 'cradle of wine-making' Georgia
The Georgia show will see pottery fragments dating back to the 6th century BC. Photo: Georges Gobet/AFP

The wine history museum in the southwestern city of Bordeaux – dubbed “adult Disneyland” when it opened last year – will showcase 125 objects from the Black Sea nation dating back as far as the Neolithic era.

“We're trying to show how much the phenomenon of wine has been an inseparable part of daily Georgian life and culture since the very beginning,” exhibit commissioner Nino Lordkipanidze told AFP.

More than 39,000 people flocked to the museum in the French wine capital this year to see its first major exhibition, “Bistrot!”, gathering works of art portraying cafes and bars over the ages.

The Georgia show will see pottery fragments dating back to the 6th century BC – containing traces of tartaric acid, proof of the presence of wine – go on display for the first time.

It will also feature a partially-reconstructed “marani”, or Georgian wine cellar, and the large egg-shaped clay pots known as “kvevri” that are still used by Georgian wine-makers today.

The museum is also putting on a series of talks, concerts, film screenings and, of course, wine tastings.

Archaeological finds have shown that viticulture in Georgia dates as far back as 7,000 BC, well before western Europeans were even thinking about having a tipple.

Grapevine tendrils have even been found buried next to human remains.

“The vine accompanied the buried person in their journey to the hereafter,” Lordkipanidze said.

Early Georgians mulched grapes in their entirety — juice, skins, pips, stems and all – and left the mix to ferment in kvevri, stored in underground pits to keep the liquid cool.

The pots and the process are still used nowadays for reds and whites, and as the taste for naturally-made wines spreads globally, winemakers as far afield as Australia and Italy are mimicking the old technology.

The kvevri clay-pot method of fermenting wine won a place in 2013 on Unesco's list of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity”.

By Alexandra Lesieur

FARMING

Cold snap ‘could slash French wine harvest by 30 percent’

A rare cold snap that froze vineyards across much of France this month could see harvest yields drop by around a third this year, France's national agriculture observatory said on Thursday.

Cold snap 'could slash French wine harvest by 30 percent'
A winemaker checks whether there is life in the buds of his vineyard in Le Landreau, near Nantes in western France, on April 12th, following several nights of frost. Photo: Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP

Winemakers were forced to light fires and candles among their vines as nighttime temperatures plunged after weeks of unseasonably warm weather that had spurred early budding.

Scores of vulnerable fruit and vegetable orchards were also hit in what Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie called “probably the greatest agricultural catastrophe of the beginning of the 21st century.”

IN PICTURES: French vineyards ablaze in bid to ward off frosts

The government has promised more than €1 billion in aid for destroyed grapes and other crops.

Based on reported losses so far, the damage could result in up to 15 million fewer hectolitres of wine, a drop of 28 to 30 percent from the average yields over the past five years, the FranceAgriMer agency said.

That would represent €1.5 to €2 billion of lost revenue for the sector, Ygor Gibelind, head of the agency’s wine division, said by videoconference.

It would also roughly coincide with the tally from France’s FNSEA agriculture union.

Prime Minister Jean Castex vowed during a visit to damaged fields in southern France last Saturday that the emergency aid would be made available in the coming days to help farmers cope with the “exceptional situation.”

READ ALSO: ‘We’ve lost at least 70,000 bottles’ – French winemakers count the cost of late frosts

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