Autumn in Kakheti: experiencing the Georgian grape harvest

The time when Georgia comes alive

I arrived in Kakheti in the last week of September, when the Rkatsiteli vines were turning yellow at the tips and the air smelled of fermenting grapes from half a mile away. The family whose guesthouse I was staying in — a grandmother, her son, his wife, and their three children — had been awake since four in the morning. By the time I came downstairs at seven, there were already two large cauldrons of grape juice reducing on a wood fire in the courtyard.

This is rtveli — the Georgian grape harvest — and it is the moment when the wine country of eastern Georgia is most completely itself.

What rtveli means

Rtveli is not just a harvest. In Georgia, it is a social institution. Families from Tbilisi and the diaspora return to Kakheti in September and October to help with the picking. Extended family members who have moved to the city spend weeks back at the village property. Friends come to help and are fed and housed in return. The entire structure of Georgian family and community life becomes visible during rtveli in a way that the rest of the year conceals.

The harvest in Kakheti typically begins in mid-September for the earliest varieties and extends through October for the later ones. Different varieties have different harvest windows: Rkatsiteli and Kisi are typically mid-September to early October; Saperavi is usually early to mid-October.

The days of picking

Picking begins at dawn — the cool morning air preserves the grape quality better than the afternoon heat. Teams move through the rows of vines with traditional wooden or plastic containers (called satsnakheli) and curved harvesting knives. The picking pace is steady and rhythmic; experienced pickers move faster than they appear to.

The harvested grapes are brought to the satsnakheli — the pressing trough, traditionally wooden — either by donkey or in the beds of Soviet-era farm trucks (both were in evidence at the guesthouses where I stayed over two weeks). In larger family operations, mechanical conveyors have replaced some of this labour; in smaller family operations, the processing is entirely manual.

The pressing

Foot treading in a wooden satsnakheli is the traditional method. I was invited to participate on the second afternoon of my stay, after the grandmother had assessed me carefully and apparently decided I was sufficiently enthusiastic and sanitary. The sensation is difficult to describe: the cool grape must on your feet, the resistance of whole clusters, the juice rising around your ankles as you tread systematically across the wooden trough.

The treading extracts juice while leaving the skins, seeds, and stems largely intact — the combination that will go into the qvevri together for the skin-contact maceration that produces Georgia’s amber wine. A foot tread is both more thorough and more gentle than mechanical processing; it extracts juice without crushing seeds (which would add bitterness) and keeps the whole berries and cluster stems largely intact.

After the initial tread, the must (grape juice plus skins) is scooped into the waiting qvevri. The winemaker seals the vessel’s opening with a cloth to allow fermentation gases to escape, and the process of natural fermentation begins with the wild yeasts present on the grape skins.

The evenings

Rtveli evenings are supras. Every evening during the harvest, the family and their helpers gather at a table that appears to have been set for twice as many people as are present. Wine from last year’s qvevri — clear, amber, smelling of dried fruit and beeswax — is poured from clay pitchers. The tamada — the winemaker himself, in this house — composes toasts that grow more philosophical as the evening progresses.

The food: khinkali made fresh by the grandmother, grilled pork from animals they raised, bean dishes from dried beans they grew, walnut dishes from the tree in the courtyard, fresh cheese. The table does not empty during the evening; it refills as dishes are consumed.

By the third evening, I was beginning to understand why Georgians in Tbilisi count the days until rtveli.

The wine in progress

One evening the winemaker took me to the marani — the wine cellar — after dinner. The fermentation in the qvevri was audible before we descended the steps: a low, constant hissing and bubbling from beneath the sealed clay lids. The smell was of wine in the process of becoming itself — yeasty, fruity, alive.

He removed one lid and let me look in. The cap of grape skins was floating on the surface of the fermenting juice, and bubbles were rising continuously from below. The temperature of the fermenting must was noticeably warmer than the surrounding cellar air — the fermentation is exothermic, generating heat as the yeasts convert sugar to alcohol.

He punched the cap down with a long wooden stick — twice a day he does this, to keep the skins submerged and to integrate the fermenting juice with the skin material for consistent colour and tannin extraction. Then he replaced the lid.

In three weeks, the active fermentation would be complete. In six months, the wine would be pressed off the skins and transferred to a clean qvevri for the remaining maceration and settling. In spring, it would be tasted. If it was ready, it would become the next vintage.

The vintage I was smelling through the cellar air would eventually become the amber wine in that clay pitcher at next year’s rtveli table. The cycle is very short and very long simultaneously.

When to visit Kakheti during harvest

September 15 – October 15 is the core harvest window in most years, varying by variety and by how the summer has developed. The best way to confirm dates is to contact your intended guesthouse or winery directly in August.

Participating in the harvest requires either a personal connection to a Kakheti family or a booking at one of the guesthouses or wineries that welcome harvest participants. This is not hard to arrange with advance effort.

Our wine tasting in Tbilisi guide lists some producers who welcome visitors during harvest, and our best wineries guide includes notes on which estates offer harvest participation.

The wine-making calendar in Kakheti

Understanding the rtveli in context means understanding the full annual cycle of Kakhetian winemaking. For the visitor arriving in September, the harvest looks like a single event — but it is the culmination of twelve months of work.

Winter (January–February): Vine pruning. The dormant vines are cut back to the appropriate number of canes for the coming year. This is when the architecture of the vine is set — decisions made in February directly affect the quantity and quality of the harvest eight months later.

Spring (March–May): Bud break, then the first growth of the new season. The vineyard requires attention: tying the new shoots to the training wires, managing the canopy, and watching for spring frosts that can devastate young shoots.

Summer (June–August): The grapes develop through veraison — the moment when Saperavi grapes shift from green to deep purple, when Rkatsiteli shifts from hard green to golden yellow. Canopy management continues. For natural winemakers, the vineyard work is primarily about creating the conditions for healthy, fully ripe grapes with good natural yeast populations.

Rtveli (September–October): The harvest. The decision of when to pick — judging sugar levels, acidity, and the character the winemaker wants — is the most consequential single decision in the wine year.

Post-harvest (November–March): The wine ferments and then settles in the sealed qvevri through winter. Active fermentation lasts 2–3 weeks; the remaining months are for clarification and the slow development of character.

Spring pressing (March–April): The wine is pressed off the skins (for traditional Kakhetian amber) and transferred to clean qvevri for the remaining ageing before bottling. This is when the winemaker first tastes the finished wine.

The bottle you open in a Tbilisi wine bar is the product of this full annual cycle, multiplied by the age of the vine and the decades of knowledge of the winemaker. The rtveli is the visible peak of the process, but only because it is the moment when the harvest — all the year’s accumulated work — comes in from the field.

How to find harvest accommodation

The best approach is to contact guesthouses and small wineries in Kakheti directly in August to enquire about the harvest dates and whether they welcome visitors. The towns of Sighnaghi, Telavi, Kvareli, and Gurjaani are all good bases for harvest season.

Our best wineries guide includes notes on producers who welcome cellar door visitors, many of whom also offer accommodation or can recommend guesthouses. The wine tasting in Tbilisi guide includes some producer contacts who are active during harvest.

An alternative for those who cannot arrange a direct invitation is a structured Kakheti wine tour — these run throughout September and October and typically include vineyard and winery visits during the active harvest period.

Book a Kakheti wine region tour from Tbilisi

What to bring

Clothes you do not mind staining permanently with grape juice. Good boots for vineyard walking. A willingness to eat more than you think you can. And an open schedule — the harvest runs at its own pace, and the evenings extend as long as the tamada has toasts left to compose.

And patience for the morning after. The rtveli evenings are generous with wine, and the morning wake-up call is the sound of the cauldrons starting again at four in the morning. This is, you will decide, a reasonable price for what the evening offered.