Clearing Customs and Immigration in practically every country we visited to film the Great Human Race was always a hassle. We didn’t travel light. For each shoot the crew lugged scores of huge Pelican cases filled with all sorts of equipment ranging from cameras to drones to audio equipment. Prior to entry, each country recorded the serial numbers from every piece of equipment and everything had to be checked and then rechecked. A problem usually held us up even longer. Eight years ago when we were filming it was typically the drone that caused the issue. Drones were not as common then as they are now and bringing them into certain countries was fraught with difficulty. This happened over and over again throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. That is, except The Republic of Georgia. Our welcome into Georgia was quite different indeed.
Guess what you get at their passport control??
Entering Georgia with all of National Geo’s equipment was a breeze. What normally took hours in other countries took just a few minutes there. But, that wasn’t the biggest surprise. What occurred at passport control blew my mind. Here is a play-by-play…
I walked up to the window and handed over my passport to the immigration officer. The woman behind the glass took my passport, looked at it briefly, then placed my passport on the desk. Next, she picked up her phone and proceeded to do the oddest thing – she started scrolling through Facebook right in front of me! From my vantage point I could not tell if she was looking for me on Facebook as a part of the screening process or if she was just scrolling through her feed. After a few minutes she put her phone down, leafed through my passport to find an empty page and then stamped it. What happened next blew my mind. She reached back and grabbed something out of one of the many boxes lining the wall behind her and, in one swift motion, handed me my passport in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other while exclaiming, “Welcome to Georgia!”
“Welcome to Georgia indeed” I thought to myself as I cleared immigration with my first ever bottle of Saperavi!
a culinary country
Georgia has a very rich food heritage. It has deep roots in honey and fermented dairy products such as yogurt (Matsoni) and a variety of cheese. And, it also is home to the earliest wine in the world! Thankfully, Georgia takes its wine heritage seriously and continues to make very high quality wine using ancestral practices. For example, Georgian wine producers making wine under the “natural” label use a wild fermentation (no added yeast), ferment their wine in Qvevris (clay vessels sunk into the ground), and adhere to strict standards about what they CANNOT add into their wine. Wine made according to these standards is a completely different thing entirely than other wines. And, that makes all the difference.
Our own wine evolution
Red wine has been our go-to drink since Christina and I first met. Like most young couples, Christina and I could only afford box wine for years. Rarely, we would splurge on an actual glass bottle for special occasions. We did this so rarely, in fact, that I remember each and every time it happened. The first real bottle of wine we enjoyed together was Frog’s Leap Red Zinfandel for a special date.
Then there was that time when we ordered our first bottle of wine at a restaurant. We were Princeton, New Jersey and we were already stretching financially for the $40 bottle we selected. You could imagine our panic when the bill came after they confused the bottle we ordered with the $300 dollar bottle they gave us! Over time, we eventually progressed to the large, 1.5 liter bottles of wine and that practice persisted for almost a decade. It has only been the past ten years that we have been in a position to advance to the standard 750 mL bottle. And, most of those have been a result of periodic runs to Total Wine where we never spend more than $12 per bottle.
Next step in our wine evolution
Most recently, we are in the throes of taking the next necessary step in our wine consumption evolution. This step is certainly the most important step we have taken. It centers around a focus on wine pairing – with a twist. Typically pairing wine with food means selecting wine to enhance a dining experience. Pairing, in this context, however, means pairing or, aligning our approach to wine with our approach to food. In other words, caring about farming practices, processing, and additives in our wine just like we do with our food.
It turns out that the differences between box wine, 1.5 L bottles and 750 bottles of wine are insignificant compared to the difference between almost all wine available today and wine made in line with the standards we hold for our food.
Wine Lessons in Georgia
Two weeks ago I returned to Georgia. This time I wasn’t with a Nat Geo film crew. Instead, Christina, Brianna and her boyfriend, Will joined me on an ethnographic research trip to learn about some very traditional cheesemaking traditions. While we were there we also received an unexpected education on wine.
As it turns out, the Republic of Georgia is the perfect place to learn about traditional winemaking because archaeological evidence supports it as the birthplace of wine! In 2017 archaeologists recovered clay vessels in Neolithic villages, Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, dating to 8,000 years ago! What was special about these clay vessels is that they contained traces of tartaric acid which is a by-product of making wine. Uninterrupted wine making for 8,000 years has resulted in an incredible winemaking tradition that is still alive there today. And, many of these winemakers are continuing to use many indigenous grapes such as rkatsiteli, mtsvane, and my favorite, saperavi.
tastings at all levels
We enjoyed a lot of wine while we were in Georgia. While in a small mountain farming village in a remote area, traditional cheesemaker Galina shared wine with us that her family made. We enjoyed a curated wine pairing at restaurant Barbarestan in Tbilisi. We even experienced the most magical wine tasting you could imagine thanks to Chef Alex Rionelli, owner of Georgian House Authentic Restaurant who created the opportunity for us to visit, Tetra Cave. In addition to containing an incredible archaeological site complete with stone tools, pottery, and cave bear remains, this cave was historically used to train cosmonauts during the Soviet Era and also used for spelio-therapy for patients with respiratory issues. Currently, it is used to age some of the best Georgian wines under constant temperatures. As it turned out, we were there for the coolest private wine tasting imaginable. After receiving an expertly guided tour we ended at the rear of the cave where a sommelier waited for us next to a table covered in bottles of wine and Georgian cheeses.
bringing it all together
We received our biggest wine education, however, on the last night of our trip. After a 45-minute taxi ride up the side of the mountain with breathtaking views of Tbilisi we arrived at the gate to Gotsa Winery. Upon entering we were met by Nina Gotsadze who gave us a tour of their facility where they exclusively make natural wine. Over the next few hours we learned that they grow all of their own grapes using regenerative farming methods, spontaneously ferment their wine solely with wild yeasts in Qvevri’s (traditional clay vessels sunk in the ground), use absolutely no additives or chemicals whatsoever in the process, and bottle with the minimal amount of sulfites needed.
There was one poster on the wall of their facility that depicted the amount of additives allowed in the bottles of three different types of wine: conventional, organic, and natural. Visually seeing the 59 additives that are allowed in wine by the European Union without the requirement of appearing on the label blew my mind. The United States actually allows a whopping 76 additives! What’s worse, winemakers don’t have to disclose them on the label! Even the organic bottle in the middle of the poster contained more additives that I would have imagined. It was the bottle on the far right of the poster depicting natural wine that Nina and her family were making. And, it was incredible.
Is Drinking Wine Ancestrally Appropriate?
Alcohol consumption is not a modern day phenomenon. In fact, drinking naturally fermented alcohol may have very ancient roots. According to the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis proposed in 2004 by UC Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley, “our attraction to booze arose millions of years ago, when our ape and monkey ancestors discovered that the scent of alcohol led them to ripe, fermenting and nutritious fruit.” In fact, he believes that primates will preferentially select fruits that have a fairly high alcohol content and that humans “have inherited an ancestral bias that associates alcohol with a nutritional reward.” You might ask what that nutritional reward might be? Well, according to Recent advances of fermented fruits: A review on strains, fermentation strategies, and functional activities, recently published in June 2024 in Food Chemistry: X, microorganisms in fermented fruits:
- regulate gut microbiota,
- produce beneficial microbial metabolites such as organic acids,
- increase the content of functional nutrients of fruits including polyphenols, flavonoids, organic acids, polysaccharides, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and other efficacious components, giving the fruit excellent antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and gut microbiota modulation activities.
In 2014, Dudley published, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol where he presents an evolutionary interpretation to explain routine low-level consumption of alcohol. So, believe it or not, drinking alcohol may be ancestrally appropriate. But, there is a huge difference between routine low-level consumption of wild, naturally fermented alcohol and modern day drinking patterns and the vast majority that is available to consumers as a result of the modern industrial food system.
Can wine be a part of a healthy diet?
This is a question we get asked regularly. And, to be completely honest, it is a question Christina and I ask ourselves from time to time. As we try to navigate modern human life while inhabiting ancient bodies it is only reasonable to question when hardcore orthorexic approaches to meeting our biological needs through diet begin to negatively impact our emotional, and cultural needs. It is achieving this unique delicate balance where real nourishment is found. And, for some of us, that balance may include wine.
It is important to understand that the question, “Can wine be part of a healthy diet?” is meaningless unless we qualify what we mean by wine. This is the same for any food in question. How many of you have asked yourself or your doctor or your nutritionist questions like:
- Is bread healthy?
- Are humans supposed to eat cheese made from the milk of other animals?
- Should we eat meat?
- Can wine be part of a healthy diet?
The reality is that these questions have no answer. Why? Because none of these labels are meaningful.
The foods which they refer to are so incredibly variable that it is beyond comprehension. Typical white, yeasted, sliced bread full of additives, emulsifiers, conditioners and sugar should never be consumed by anyone – ever. But, a wild, long fermented sourdough bread made from freshly ground local, heirloom grains is something altogether different. The same line of reasoning goes for American cheese versus raw milk, traditionally made cheese or CAFO meat compared to grass fed, grass finished beef. And, certainly, this also goes for conventional wine loaded with all sorts of hidden additives versus natural wine.
What steps can you take now?
I want to be very clear here, I am NOT suggesting that if you do not drink you should start. Far from it. What I am advocating, however, is if you do drink wine, the type of wine you drink can make all the difference between something that can harm you and something that can, in moderate amounts, be part of a healthy lifestyle. Just like with food, your wine should be made from the highest quality ingredients processed using traditional techniques. According to Primal Wine, “This means organic or biodynamic farming practices, spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts, and limited to no additives during the winemaking process, and of course, minimal or no added sulfites.”
We are currently working on sourcing natural wines from several regions, including the Republic of Georgia for sale at the Modern Stone Age Kitchen, so stay tuned! You can also obtain natural wines through several sources such as Dry Farm Wines and Primal Wine and have them delivered to your door! We are an affiliate of Dry Farm Wines so if you decide to order from them please use this link: www.dryfarmwines.com/eatlikeahuman so your order helps support our work! You can also find additional information on events and festivals focused on natural wines check out the website, Raw Wine.
I believe certain alcohol consumption can be ancestrally appropriate. I also believe that yes, wine can be a part of a healthy human diet. However, it needs to be the right wine consumed in the right manner. There is no doubt in my mind that natural wine, enjoyed with friends, family or a loved one, can be nourishing.
If any interest in going on a tour of the Republic of Georgia please contact us!
A Flipped Model and Much Needed Break
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