Saperavi: The Red-Fleshed Georgian Grape, and Where to Find a Bottle

Saperavi is pronounced sah-peh-RAH-veerecorded by Tamari Araviashvili.

If you drink Malbec because you like a red that fills the glass, try a Saperavi next. It's darker, it has more acid holding it up, and it carries a wild, savoury streak that Malbec rarely shows. The easiest pure bottle to order online right now is the Standing Stone Teinturier Saperavi from the Finger Lakes, at around $38 to $42.

That a New York bottle leads a page about Georgia's grape is the first honest thing to say about Saperavi in America. Plenty of Georgian Saperavi reaches the United States. Very little of it reaches the online shelf you can order from tonight.

The grape that's red all the way through

Most red grapes have pale, greenish flesh. The colour in a Cabernet or a Pinot Noir comes from the skins, steeped in the juice during fermentation. Saperavi is one of the few that is red inside, a teinturier, the same quirk that defines Alicante Bouschet, the grape this site is built around. Cut one in half and it looks like the right-hand grape at the top of this page.

The practical result is a wine of startling colour, deep enough to stain the glass and the teeth. Georgians make most of it in Kakheti, the wine region in the east of the country, with plantings in Kartli as well, according to the ampelography kept by Georgia's National Parliamentary Library. It's by far the country's most important red: Wines of Georgia, the national promotional body, has said it accounts for about a third of all the wine Georgia makes.

What it tastes like, and the two styles to know

Dry Saperavi tastes of blackberry and plum, with licorice and a dark-chocolate edge. The tannin is firm and the acidity is high for a wine this dark, which is why it tastes structured rather than jammy and why the best ones age for years.

Two names on Georgian labels will tell you most of what you need:

• Mukuzani is the classic dry Saperavi, from the right bank of the Alazani river in Kakheti. Start here if you like Malbec.
• Kindzmarauli is Saperavi made naturally semi-sweet, also in Kakheti. If you've enjoyed the sweeter Georgian reds I wrote about in defense of semi-sweet reds, this is the one.

You'll also see Saperavi made in qvevri, the clay vessels Georgians bury underground, which pushes the wine toward earth and grip. The Lost Eden blend I picked for the Georgia guide is partly qvevri-aged, and it's the Georgian bottle to order if you want the origin story in the glass.

Why a New York bottle

Konstantin Frank, a viticulturist who had worked in Odessa before emigrating, first planted Saperavi in the United States in 1958, in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, according to a 2022 report in the Washington Post. Growers there value it because it survives hard winters. Standing Stone Vineyards has grown it for years, and when Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard bought Standing Stone in 2017, it took on 6.9 acres of the grape with it, by the same report.

Here's the part to weigh before you click. I haven't tasted the 2023, and I won't pretend I have. Wine.com's listing puts it at 12.5% alcohol, partly fermented with whole bunches and aged in steel and sandstone amphora, which reads like a lighter, fresher take than a Kakhetian Mukuzani. If you want the full Georgian weight, the better route is a Georgian bottle, and the record below shows they are here in numbers.

How to find a Georgian one

The federal label register is more encouraging than the online shelf. In the twelve months to 23 October 2026, Georgian Saperavi appeared on at least 108 approved US labels, under 61 brands, cleared by at least 37 importers. That's the largest count of any Georgian grape we've checked, and the record below names who brings it in. Ask a good wine shop for a Mukuzani, give them an importer's name from that list, and they can usually order one.

Sadie, the black Labrador in our short films, is registered as Saperavi. Anyone who has met her will understand why the name stuck.