DILA-O
Dila-o (pronounced “dee-lah-oh”) is the younger, lighter line from Orgo, the qvevri winery run by Gogi Dakishvili and his son Temuri in Kisiskhevi, just outside Telavi in Kakheti. Gogi was among the first Georgian winemakers to bottle and export qvevri wines, and Dila-o offers a fresh, approachable take on that tradition, using shorter skin contact to bring out the fruit and freshness of eastern Georgia’s native grapes.
“As an eastern Georgian I have to say that heavy skin contact wines are in my blood,” says Gogi, “but as I worked with western Georgian grapes the idea of combining the winemaking styles began to intrigue me.” Traditional Kakhetian amber wines often spend six months on their skins, developing considerable body and tannin. In western Georgia, winemakers generally use less grape pomace and shorter macerations, resulting in lighter, more delicate wines. Dila-o grew out of Gogi’s interest in bringing these two regional traditions together.
The amber wine combines equal parts Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane, harvested early to preserve acidity and fermented on their skins for about a month. It retains the color and gentle grip of an amber wine without the weight or tannin of a traditional Kakhetian example. The Saperavi spends about two weeks on its skins, preserving the grape’s dark fruit and spice in a fresher, more approachable red.
Both wines ferment spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in qvevri, the traditional clay vessels buried beneath the cellar floor, before settling in stainless steel. They are bottled unfined and unfiltered, with minimal sulfur additions.
