2017-09-15
Good evening,
Dear friends,
dear honored guests,
This is a great opportunity for us. First of all I would like to thank you all for coming to celebrate together a truly historic event for Georgia. This is about celebrating the Cradle of Winemaking, Georgia in this Citadel of Winemaking, Bordeaux.
This is a truly unique opportunity for us to present Georgia as a country with ancient culture, with 8 000 years of winemaking history. It is often said that Georgians don’t have blood in their veins – they have wine instead. Wine and winemaking are the major markers of Georgia’s national identity. And the entire Georgian culture is saturated with the culture of winemaking – wine is everywhere – it is in the music, poetry, frescos, the Georgian ornaments …
Indeed the fact that, we installed Qvevri – the clay vessel for fermenting wine is something Georgians dreamed about for many centuries. And Qvevri is recognized by UNESCO and included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity. For Georgians, Qvevri is much more than that.
Take the Georgian feast, the Supra – another way of social coexistence and a feast. It’s made up of four essential things: Georgian food, wine, Georgian singing and toast making.
And a toast maker, which is called Tamada in Georgia, is the head of any feast, any Supra. And I would say that in Georgia all members of Supra observe very strict rules better than they observe the traffic rules. For this reason, I sometimes think that being a toast-master – Tamada - in Georgia is a better position than being a Prime-Minister.
And I would like to say that Georgians enjoy the wine even in the afterlife: archeological finds show that there are places in the burial sites where we discover Qvevris.
And I am really excited to have an opportunity to invite you all to the country that is one of the oldest Christian countriy's in the world, and one of the reasons they remain so devoted to their religion is because wine is part of the Christian communion.
Thank you very much!
I would like to ask you to come to Georgia and to savor Georgia and to savor and taste Georgian wine as a very strong part of Georgia’s national identity,
Thank you very much for this opportunity and thank you very much for being friends of Georgia.
Thank you!