Following in his ancestors' footsteps in winemaking

The Nuri Sirabidze Wine Cellar is a family-owned winery in the village of Gegelidzeebi, Keda Municipality. Nestled in the mountains of Adjara, one of the wine producing-regions of Georgia, the wine cellar offers a great selection of natural wines.

Pridon Sirabidze and his spouse Manana Bolkvadze continue the viticulture legacy of Pridon’s ancestors. Pridon Sirabidze’s grandfather owned and farmed a vineyard in the area his entire life.

Telling the story of his family's winemaking beginnings, he showed us a row of vines. “My grandfather planted the first grapevines of different varieties in 1952 when he moved to this land”, he said. “My father planted up more vines in the ‘90s”. 

Although Pridon has no formal degree in wine making, his passion for wine has been the driving force contributing to his success.

Standing at the end of a row of vines, Pridon recalls what it looked like when he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and became a vintner, more than 17 years ago.  “I remember as a young boy walking into our cellar and seeing wine fermenting in Qvevri (wine stored in a rotund clay vessel that’s buried up to its neck in the earth). At that time I fell in love with winemaking”.

He moved into the business full-time in 2006. Now he and Manana own a 6 000 square meter vineyard with more than 20 unique endemic grape varieties, including Tsolikauri and Usakhelouri, sprawling across the road from their house and a small but professionally fitted-out wine-making facility attached to his family house. Rather than selling his grapes to wine producers, he undertakes the entire winemaking process from harvest to bottle.

What makes their wines unique, said Pridon Sirabidze, is the quality of the terroir, climate and weather conditions. The soil just does very well with vine.

His focus is on safe and healthy wine created without applying any chemicals on their vineyards.

“To succeed, you need to produce natural wines”, he emphasized.

For local distribution, together with their partner the family opened a wine cellar in Batumi that sells direct to consumers. They also work on exporting their wine abroad.

In addition to wine making, Manana and Pridon plan to expand the small guesthouse for visitors, who appreciate Zemo Adjara’s mountain landscapes and natural wine and arrange an ethnographic corner and culinary master classes of Georgian cuisine. 

“Our end goal is to build a small wine factory that will help us to provide jobs for 20-25 locals and produce more natural wines,” he said. 

Recognizing Pridon’s and Manana’s  enthusiasm and passion for winemaking, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the European Union (EU), under ENPARD and EU4Business Programmes, supported the Nuri Sirabidze Wine Cellar with modern wine tanks to advance food safety and ensure quality winemaking.

Since 2022 the Nuri Sirabidze Wine Cellar is participating in the FAO agrarian markets, Unique Georgian Taste supported by the EU4Business initiative.

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FAO and the EU support small, medium and large farming initiatives under the ENPARD and EU4Business Programmes. Since 2022, the Programme has placed an even more significant emphasis on improving food safety in the country. Another EU-funded initiative implemented by FAO, UNDP, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) aims to promote entrepreneurship, improve legislative frameworks, increase access to finance and strengthen cooperation with the EU Member States.