Kisi: Georgia's Aromatic White That Trades Sugar for Grip

Kisi is pronounced KEE-seerecorded by Tamari Araviashvili.

If you love how a Gewurztraminer smells but wish it finished dry, start with a bottle of Askaneli Kisi. It's the one a Georgian wine importer in Florida hands to people who have never tried the grape, and he says many Florida Whole Foods stores carry it. I found it at the Whole Foods in Viera, near Melbourne, for about $16.

Kisi comes from Kakheti, Georgia's eastern wine heartland, and it carries the same loud floral perfume that makes aromatic whites easy to love. The difference is what happens after the first sniff. Where Gewurztraminer often leans sweet and soft, Kisi tends to stay dry and, in its traditional form, grows a texture you can feel.

The bottle to start with, from someone who sells it

I asked Ucha Tsiklauri, founder of Georgian Wines and Spirits, an import and distribution business in Florida, which Kisi he would hand an American who had never tasted one. Megan McCarthy at Colangelo introduced us. Here is his answer, in his words:

"When it comes to Kisi, I would highly recommend Askaneli Kisi, made in stainless steel. In my opinion, it is the best example of this style of Kisi that I have tasted on the market."

On where to find it, he says many Whole Foods stores in Florida carry it, though not every location, and that Total Wine has it listed and can order it for you even when it isn't on the shelf.

Here's the part you should weigh. Ucha's company is the sole U.S. importer of this wine, as the back label says, so this is a pick from someone with a stake in the bottle. I'm telling you because you'd want to know, and because it doesn't make him wrong: the person who brings a wine across an ocean usually knows exactly which of their bottles makes the best first impression. I've bought a bottle but haven't opened it yet. That's next, and this page will say what I found.

Two Kisis, and why the split matters

Start with the aromatics, because that's where Kisi announces itself: apricot, white peach, pear, honey and wildflowers, with a chamomile note underneath. The acidity is moderate rather than sharp, so the fruit feels rounded instead of tart.

The fresh style, fermented in steel, is the friendlier one, and it's the Askaneli. It reads as a dry, perfumed white with stone fruit and honeyed edges, closer to a well-made Pinot Gris than to anything Georgian you may have heard about. Pinot Grigio, its more famous cousin, turns up at every party the way a phone charger turns up in a bag: nobody remembers packing it, and nobody is pleased to see it.

The amber style is the one Georgia is known for. Kisi has a thick skin, and when it ferments on those skins in a qvevri (also romanised kvevri), a large clay vessel buried in the ground, it turns golden-amber and picks up orange peel, dried fruit, walnut, beeswax and a long, faintly bitter almond finish. It also gains a tannic grip you almost never find in an aromatic white. UNESCO added the qvevri method to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2013.

Ucha's advice is to take them in that order: the Askaneli first, "to experience the fresh, aromatic expression of the grape," then a qvevri Kisi "to appreciate how dramatically the traditional Georgian winemaking method can influence its character." For the second bottle he names Baia's Wine and Pheasant's Tears. Neither is distributed in Florida right now, so that one means ordering online from a retailer that ships to you.

A grape that nearly ran out of vineyard

Kisi isn't one of Georgia's big plantings and never was. An ampelography entry kept by Georgia's National Parliamentary Library places it mostly in Kakheti's Telavi and Gurjaani districts, says it "was more widespread in the past," and puts its whole planting at "around several hectares." The entry carries no date, so read that as a low point rather than today's count. It also says there are no historical records of the grape's age, and considers Kisi a likely natural cross of Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane, which would make it the younger of the three.

That's why a grocery-store bottle of it in Florida is worth a moment's attention. A grape that was ever down to a few hectares doesn't usually make it to a shelf an ocean away.

What to eat with it

Aromatic but dry, Kisi is a clever match for the food that defeats other whites. Think spice and herb. Its perfume flatters Georgian walnut-and-herb cooking, khachapuri and mildly spiced dishes, while the acidity keeps up with fried and rich plates. The amber version, with its tannic grip, turns toward grilled meat and hard cheese. Serve the fresh style chilled, the amber one cool but not cold.

The honest part

Amber Kisi divides people. The grip and that bitter-almond finish read as strange if you came expecting a crisp, easy pour, and there's no critic consensus to lean on yet. That's the case for starting where Ucha starts: the fresh Askaneli tells you whether you like the grape before the clay tells you whether you like the method.

There's a second honest part, and it's about this page rather than the wine. It carries a record of who imports Kisi into the United States, built from the federal label register: twenty-six companies, fifty-two approved labels. The bottle sitting on my counter is not one of the fifty-two, and for a while I couldn't find its approval at all.

It was there the whole time. Georgian Wines and Spirits cleared Askaneli Kisi in September 2020, and the reasons I kept missing it are the reasons to read this record carefully. Approvals never expire, so a 2020 approval sits outside any twelve-month window. The search matches whole fields, so a label filed as "Askaneli Kisi" never turns up under "Askaneli". And on that record the grape field is blank, so no count by grape will ever include it. Read the record as a floor, never a ceiling: it can tell you a wine is here, and it cannot tell you a wine is not.

— Chris Berry

If you're switching from a famous grape

If Gewurztraminer is your comfort white, Kisi is the natural next step: the same aromatic, floral character, but dry, with texture where Gewurztraminer often gives you sugar. See Wines Like Gewurztraminer for the full swap, and Order This Instead for the short version.

Part of Lesser-Known Wines: 17 Obscure Grapes Worth Switching To, the full underdog-swap guide.