Georgia

Shalva Khetsuriani

Shalva is the CEO of Khetsuriani Winery and Director of Riedel Georgia. Shalva’s family were successful winemakers, but during the country’s communist period the family winery was appropriated by the government. Imbued with his grandmother’s family stories, a quarter of a century ago Shalva began rebuilding his family winery. He would go on to found the first sommelier school in Georgia, and was one of the drivers in setting up the Georgian Sommelier Association, now a full-member of the International Sommelier Association (ASI), as well as organising many Georgian wine master classes the world over to promote the country’s wines. These ventures are but a few of many, all demonstrating Shalva’s love for Georgian wine. Shalva recognises that the region of the Caucasus is a melting pot of “so many eno-gastronomic, ethnographic and cultural traditions”, many of which are under-represented in the wine world; it is his aim to change that.