Turton Wines is looking to supply artisan wines from small vineyards to the public both locally and nationally. The supermarkets have done a great job of introducing some good wines to the nation and making wine drinking as popular as it is today. However supermarkets have to have huge quantities to fill their shelves nationwide and on some levels this is reducing the range of wines available to consumers. Our concept is to let people have a choice of some real small production wines which will never find themselves on off licence or supermarket shelves. These wines are produced with real skill and dedication in contrast to the bulk production wines people have become used to. With this in mind Turton Wines chooses its wines with great care. We decided to stock a range of Georgian wines as they are so different and earthy.

The list also includes wines from France, Australia, Italy, Spain and South Africa. Their Georgian wine selection comes from Gaumarjos and they feature an impressive 12 wines from the region, each with useful tasting notes and information.

In Tbilisi’s State Museum there is an 18th century BC silver funeral mug, elaborately embossed: on it you see a procession of deer, and a procession of men disguised as foxes, each bearing a cup, all testifying to the wine fertility-cults which flourished in Georgia in antiquity. Indeed, Georgians are now thought by archaeologists to have been the first people in the world to discover how wild grape juice turned into wine when it was left buried throughout the winter in a shallow pit: carbon-dating of grape-pips and examination of residues on pottery shows evidence of winemaking as long ago as 7000-5000 BC – a tradition which has continued unbroken ever since. Farmers still store wine in giant cone-shaped clay jars, buried in earth and topped with a wooden lid, as they did thousands of years ago. Some linguists believe our word ‘wine’ itself comes from the Georgian word ‘gvino’.

About forty varieties of grape are grown in Georgia, with rkatsiteli and saperavi being of central importance. The former is high in acidity, producing white wines of fine character. The latter produces full-bodied red wines which can age for up to fifty years; it is also used extensively for blending with other varieties. Mtsvane – ‘mtsvane’ is the Georgian word for ‘green’ – is another important variety, often blended with rkatsiteli to which it adds a fruity, aromatic balance

Traditional Georgian winemaking methods vary with the region. In Kakheti, in the East, fermentation of the grape juice takes place together with the pulp, grape-skins and pips. Satrepezo is made using this method. The pulp is put in clay jars or Kvevri, buried in the ground so that the temperature is kept constant. Other regions employ the European method, in which fermentation of pure grape-juice must takes place without the pulp.

Finally a nice little proverb on the Turton Wines site:The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations.
French proverb

UPDATE – Moldovan wines also included on the list (Feb 2011)
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Turton Wines Limited 270 Darwen Road, Bromley Cross, Bolton BL7 9JG t: 07791 751 682