5 ms·
Georgian wine culture dates back, uninterrupted, approximately 8k years
- dyauspitr 8mo agoCrazy to think that’s roughly around when white people started becoming… white. It was basically all dark skinned people on the planet before then.
- legerdemain 8mo agoThere's a reason they call them Caucasian.
- gnull 8mo ago[flagged]
- orthoxerox 8mo agoOr if you're a 19th century German phrenologist.
- shermantanktop 8mo agoIn Florida it wouldn’t be confusing to refer to someone from Hawaii as “Hawaiian,” but in Hawaii it means something much more specific about ancestry, and it’s considered rude and even offensive to misuse it. In NYC they pronounce Oregon as “Ore-gone,” even though Oregonians pronounce it “Ore-gun.” In Portland, mispronunciation marks you as an ignorant outsider. Every place has idiosyncratic misuses of terms that come from somewhere else. Of course you are correct about “Caucasian,” but wherever you are from, I’m sure you misuse some other term. Labeling it as uneducated and unaware is a form of snobbery that you’re unlikely to be entitled to. None of us are.
- gnull 8mo agoFair point, I agree I made it too arrogant. We all have things we misuse, but I think those things may characterize us sometimes. For example, in Russian we often misuse the word Hindu to mean Indian. It may mean that the person is uneducated and maybe even unaware of the difference. A couple of my friends who've been to India or are nerds about other cultures, don't misuse the word, some even go around ranting about it. I personally feel that the way Americans use "Caucasian" is a more blatant misuse than others, and maybe that's what made me react that way. Like what is exact idea one has to miss and be unaware of to use "Caucasian" for "white"? What adds to it is that, if I understand correctly, using "Caucasian" instead of "white" in English makes you sound more official and important. I guess I can see that it's being used due to legal tradition and that's hard to change.
- shermantanktop 8mo agoRace is a tricky topic in the US due to history. The term is an 18th century creation of German academia, but somehow got adopted in the late 19th c in the US, presumably because racial restrictions were written into law and so fancy terminology was adopted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race From that Wikipedia article I learned it is used in Australia too, another place where an immigrant white majority wrote their dominance into law. WRT to “Hindu” for south Asians — that’s amazing to me, I’d be boggled to hear someone say that.
- adrian_b 8mo agoNo, Caucasian is a bogus term whose origin is in a misinterpretation of the Bible. In the Genesis, humans were partitioned in descendants of Japheth, Ham and Shem, hence terms like Hamites and Semites. However the meaning of this partition was completely other than its naive interpretation that was common during Medieval times and until recently. This partition had absolutely nothing to do with race or with the languages spoken by people, which were pretty much irrelevant in the Antiquity. The partition was based purely on political dependence. The descendants of Ham were the people politically dependent on Egypt and the descendants of Shem were the people dependent on Assyro-Babylonia. An example of people closely related and who spoke a very similar language, but who were divided based on political allegiance is that the Phoenicians were counted as descendants of Ham, because they belonged to Egypt, while Hebrews were counted as descendants of Shem, because they belonged to Assyro-Babylonia. Japheth refers to Caucasus and the descendants of Japheth were the people from Anatolia, where Indo-European kingdoms, like that of the Hittites, were dominant. During Medieval times, this grouping of people from the Bible was completely misunderstood and it was believed that it refers to race, so it was believed that "descendants of Ham" refers to Africans and "descendants of Japheth", i.e. Caucasians, refers to "white" Europeans, hence the stupid name used in America of "Caucasian".
- victorbjorklund 8mo agoYou got it the opposite way. basically some pseudoscientist thought that the schools of people from the Caucasus had the most beautiful skulls when they were dead. and since he was white he thought that this must be where all white people are coming from. So he claimed that white people are Caucasian. Even if this is of course not true that most Anglo-Saxon people are coming from the Caucasian mountains.
- victorbjorklund 8mo agoSkulls*
- jayquery 8mo ago[dead]
- riffraff 8mo agoGeorgian cuisine and drinking is little known in the west but it's really, really good. It's a pity the country has been democratically backsliding for a while, which has limited their hopes of tighter integration with the EU.
- gnull 8mo agoI doubt they will benefit from that integration much. But I'm pretty sure the way there will hurt. Georgia's economy is tied to Russia at the moment, and as you said Westerners are not exactly lining up to travel to Georgia and order its wine (Russians are). The narrative "people want EU (aka freedom and democracy), but bad dictators won't let them" is a populist one. And EU has been using it like carrot and stick to steer Georgia away from Russia, disregarding the cost of it for Georgia. That time when EU declared Georgian elections illegitimate (with no actual basis provided) to me was a violation of Georgia's sovereignty. Elections in Georgia are very competitive. I've heard that government was slowly putting pressure on media, but I don't remember anything major. Georgia could be the most democratic of ex-USSR except Baltics today.
- Tade0 8mo ago> The narrative "people want EU (aka freedom and democracy), but bad dictators won't let them" is a populist one. Former eastern block members that are currently in the EU beg to differ. It's no accident that there's such a developmental gap between those of the former communist states which turned to the west vs those who remained in Russia's sphere of influence. You can't meaningfully prosper with Russia.
- jayquery 8mo ago[dead]
- CjHuber 8mo agoIt's terrible that people think like that, especially in Georgia where they are still not tied to the debt fueled pyramid scheme that is the EU. They still think of Europe as how it was 20 years+ ago, they always only look at the surface and never if the whole concept really works out long term.
- petesergeant 8mo agoThey're very proud of it too, but having spent time in Tbilisi (strong recommend!), there's a very simple reason you can buy French and Australian wine at your local shop, but nobody has bothered to make sure there's a good selection of Georgian wine there.
- dcrazy 8mo agoGermany and especially Austria produce some rather poor reds but have carved out a niche for Riesling and Gewürtztraminer. Is there a similar niche for Georgian wine?
- Khaine 8mo agoGeorgia makes wine in its traditional style or 'european' style. Traditional style is where the crushed grapes including branches is stored in clay pots (called Qvevri) for fermentation and aging. This means Georgian wines often have a different colour and can be cloudy. European is the style of how most wine is made in Europe The most famous style is Saperavi which is a Red wine.
- 3RTB297 8mo agoI'm not who you asked, but the niche for Georgian wine is orange wine, which is white wine left to sit on the grape skins for a couple days, so it pulls more tannins. It's not exclusive to them alone, but the more distinct niche is orange wine aged in clay pots that gives it a distinct earthiness. If you appreciate understanding food anthropology, this is more similar to how wine was produced in ancient times, as opposed to a cabernet or modern varieties aged in oak or stainless steel. You can usually find maybe one variety of orange wine in the US at larger wine stores with a substantial international selection.
- Ostrogoth 8mo agoYou can also find orange (or skin contact) wine in the US at smaller boutique natural wine shops, which are becoming more common. Orange wines are cultivated in Sonoma and other wine regions in the US as well.
- olaulailadila 8mo agoAs an Armenian, I think this is bullshit, maybe.
- larodi 8mo agoWine is produced in monasteries, beer also. So => is ingrained in Christian culture. The same way marijuana is part of the Hindu culture. Am I right?
- logicchains 8mo agoWhile that may be true, Christianity is only around 2k years old, while Goergian wine culture has existed for around 8k years.
- stevenwoo 8mo agoMaybe it’s Baader-Meinhof but this wine is also a primary plot point in currently airing Apple TV+ adaptation of Drops of God. What are the odds?
- BrenBarn 8mo agoThey make some good brandy too!