New Wine Festival in Georgia: dates, meaning and how to experience it

By Mariam Lomidze, GTour desk · Fact-checked against the sources listed · Last checked 25 October 2026 · Editorial policy

What it is

The New Wine Festival — in Georgian akhali ghvinis festivali (ახალი ღვინის ფესტივალი), literally “new wine festival,” from akhali (“new”) and ghvino (“wine”) — is an annual civic celebration held in Tbilisi to mark the moment when the previous autumn’s grape harvest has finished its first fermentation in qvevri, the traditional clay vessels, and is ready to be tasted as young wine. It is not an ancient church feast but a modern public event, organised in cooperation with small and family wineries from across Georgia’s wine regions, most prominently Kakheti, Imereti, Kartli and Racha.

The festival is celebrated by everyone with a stake in Georgia’s wine culture: rural families who still ferment a few hundred litres in a buried qvevri for their own table, boutique producers exporting natural amber wine abroad, sommeliers, folk musicians, and the growing number of residents and visitors who come to Mtatsminda Park simply to taste what a given village’s 2026 or 2027 vintage tastes like in its first months. Because Georgia is widely regarded, on archaeological grounds, as one of the places where winemaking began, the event functions as a public demonstration of a living tradition rather than a commercial trade fair, although stalls do sell bottles, chacha and local food alongside the free or token-based tastings.

Historical background

• c. 6000 BC — Neolithic pottery sherds excavated at Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, south of Tbilisi, tested positive for tartaric acid residue, evidence cited by archaeologists as among the earliest attested winemaking anywhere, and widely reported after publication in 2017.
• Antiquity — Classical and early medieval writers described the vineyards of the Caucasian kingdoms of Kartli (Iberia) and Colchis, where wine was already fermented and stored underground in large earthenware qvevri.
• 4th century — According to Georgian church tradition, St. Nino arrived in Kartli carrying a cross bound from vine branches with her own hair, linking the vine symbolically to the kingdom’s conversion to Christianity around 326.
• Medieval period — Monasteries such as those of Kakheti maintained vineyards and qvevri cellars as part of their economic and liturgical life, a pattern that continued under successive Georgian kingdoms.
• 19th century — Under Russian imperial administration, Georgian viticulture was studied and partly industrialised, while rural households continued the household qvevri method alongside new wineries.
• 2013 — UNESCO inscribed the ancient Georgian traditional qvevri wine-making method on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
• 2017 — Chemical analysis of the Gadachrili Gora pottery was published internationally, reinforcing Georgia’s claim to an eight-thousand-year winemaking record.
• Mid-2010s to present — According to event organisers, the New Wine Festival at Mtatsminda Park was established as an annual public tasting, bringing hundreds of small and family producers to the capital each spring to present the year’s new vintage.

The festival sits at the meeting point of two very different timescales. One is archaeological: the qvevri method of burying large clay vessels to ferment and age wine in contact with skins, stems and pips is, on current evidence, one of the oldest continuously practised winemaking techniques in the world, and it remains the backbone of household production in villages across Kakheti, Imereti and Kartli. The other is recent and civic: the festival itself is a twenty-first-century invention, created to give that ancient method a public, urban stage rather than leaving it confined to private cellars and village markets.

The timing of the festival follows the biological calendar of the wine rather than any fixed historical anniversary. Grapes picked during the autumn harvest, known as rtveli, are pressed and sealed into qvevri through the winter; by spring the wine has completed its primary fermentation and the first racking, and is drinkable as “new wine,” ghvino akhali, though still young and often cloudy. Tbilisi’s festival was conceived to put that specific, fleeting stage of the wine in front of the public, distinguishing it clearly from the autumn harvest festivals held in the wine regions themselves.

Meaning and traditions

At the festival, producers set up long rows of tables or small tents, each representing a single family winery, a cooperative, or a particular village or appellation. Visitors move from table to table tasting small pours of the new vintage, usually a dry or semi-dry amber or red wine fermented on the skins in qvevri, sometimes alongside last year’s more settled bottles for comparison. Many stalls also sell chacha, the pomace brandy distilled from leftover grape skins and stems after pressing.

Food is central to the atmosphere even when the event is not a formal seated supra (feast): visitors typically find khinkali (dumplings), mtsvadi (grilled skewered meat), churchkhela (strings of nuts dipped repeatedly in grape-juice paste), pkhali (vegetable pastes with walnut), and fresh bread such as shoti or tonis puri baked in a clay tone oven on site. Folk ensembles often perform Georgian polyphonic singing, a style proclaimed a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, and informal toasting led by a tamada, or toastmaster, breaks out at individual tables even outside any organised supra.

Regional character shows clearly in the glass. Kakhetian producers, from the Alazani Valley, tend to pour deep amber wines made with extended skin contact, the style most associated internationally with qvevri winemaking. Imeretian wine, from western Georgia, is typically paler and less tannic, often made with shorter skin contact and a second addition of grape must. Rachan producers sometimes bring semi-sweet reds such as those associated with the Khvanchkara style. Visitors moving between tables effectively taste Georgia’s internal wine geography in a single afternoon.

When it happens

The New Wine Festival has no fixed date tied to a saint’s day or a historical anniversary; instead, organisers choose a weekend in spring once the new vintage is judged ready, which in practice has meant the second or third weekend of May. The exact Saturday and Sunday are confirmed by organisers closer to the event each year rather than set permanently in advance.

The next scheduled edition is provisionally set for 15–16 May 2027, subject to confirmation; visitors planning a trip around this date should check announcements from Georgian tourism and cultural bodies in the weeks beforehand, since the window can shift by a week in either direction depending on weather and the state of the vintage. The festival is not a public holiday: government offices, banks, shops and transport in Tbilisi operate on their normal schedule, and the event itself is confined to Mtatsminda Park rather than affecting the wider city.

Where to experience it

The festival takes place at Mtatsminda Park, on the plateau reached by the Mtatsminda Funicular from Chonkadze Street in central Tbilisi, or by road around the back of Mtatsminda Mountain. Stalls are typically laid out across the open terraces and amusement-park grounds, with tasting usually running from midday into the evening on both days, and music and food concentrated around the central plaza as light fades and the city skyline comes into view below.

A visitor can expect to receive a small tasting glass or cup, either on payment of a modest entrance or token fee or, at some editions, free of charge from individual producers, and then to walk the rows sampling wines while talking directly with the winemakers, many of whom speak some English or are happy to communicate through gesture and a shared love of the product. Basic etiquette applies: accept a poured taste rather than helping yourself from the jug, wait for a toast to finish before drinking if one is offered, and expect to be asked, cheerfully, which wine you preferred. The festival is secular and outdoors, so none of the usual church etiquette on dress or behaviour applies here, though common sense about drinking responsibly on a hillside with uneven paths and a funicular ride home is advisable.

Did you know

• Pottery residue from Gadachrili Gora, near Tbilisi, is cited by archaeologists as evidence of winemaking dating to roughly 6000 BC, among the earliest known anywhere.
• The ancient qvevri wine-making method was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013.
• Georgian ampelographers have catalogued several hundred indigenous grape varieties, far more than most wine-producing countries, many still grown only in single villages.
• Georgian polyphonic singing, frequently heard at wine festivals, was proclaimed a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage in 2001 and later inscribed on the Representative List.
• The New Wine Festival is distinct from Rtveli, the autumn grape harvest celebrated in the wine regions themselves each September and October; one marks the picking, the other the first tasting of what was picked.

Practical tips for visitors

Take the Mtatsminda Funicular from Chonkadze Street rather than driving, since parking near the park is limited during the festival; a taxi or ride-hailing app to the lower funicular station is the simplest backup. Bring cash in Georgian lari for small producers who may not accept cards, and dress in layers with comfortable walking shoes, since the plateau is hilly and May evenings in Tbilisi can turn cool after a warm afternoon. No advance booking is normally required to attend, but because the exact May weekend is confirmed only shortly beforehand, travellers building a trip around the festival should check current dates with Georgian tourism sources before finalising flights into Tbilisi International Airport. The event proceeds outdoors rain or shine, so a light waterproof is worth carrying given the unpredictability of Georgian spring weather.

Combine it with

Pair the festival with a day or two in Kakheti, Georgia’s principal wine region, to see qvevri cellars and vineyards firsthand, or extend the trip into Kartli to visit Mtskheta and Georgia’s early Christian sites, which share the historical thread of the vine running through the country’s conversion story. Travellers interested in regional wine styles can also combine a Tbilisi visit with Imereti, where a different, lighter qvevri tradition is practised.

Sources

• Ancient Georgian traditional Qvevri wine-making method
• Georgian polyphonic singing
• Georgian National Tourism Administration
• Georgia Travel official portal
• Legislative Herald of Georgia
• National Parliamentary Library of Georgia
• Georgia Patriarchate