Winter’s back, right on time. While the season of low light and short days doesn’t manifest the same in every state – looking at you Florida and California – those in the north are largely trapped indoors.

Oenophiles in the US have been discovering Georgian wines as if the country had just begun making it, although Georgia is the historically accurate birthplace of wine. The United States and the rest of the world are simply discovering its renaissance.

Giorgi (Gogi) Dakishivili is one of Georgia’s pioneering modern-artisanal winemakers. He’s best known today for his own label, Orgo, made using traditional techniques, including fermenting in qvevri (large, buried clay vessels). These wines are some of the most highly sought after Georgian wines. He also makes the wines with his son Temur at the family winery (Dakishivili Vineyards) in Telavi.

Baia Abuladze started her winery in 2015, when she was just 22, working with the help of her mother, Tamriko Ghaladze, and her siblings Gvantsa and Giorgi. Today, they farm nearly four acres, the majority of it planted to tsolikouri, considered Imereti’s top variety.

As we say goodbye to what may have been the most challenging year of our lives, let’s count our blessings and celebrate our strengths by popping open one of these delicious sparkling wines made from organic grapes.

Exports of wines from Georgia (the country — the cradle of wine — not the U.S. state — the cradle of Coca Cola) have surged in recently years, a fact that is both well-deserved and timely. Georgia deserves the increased recognition of its wine sector both because it really is the cradle of wine, with literally thousands of years of history, and because the wine industry and government have invested heavily in recently years to raise standards and promote products in key markets.

Nestled between the two ranges of the Caucasus Mountains, Georgia is home to the oldest unbroken winemaking tradition in the world. Georgians are fiercely proud of their 8,000-year winemaking tradition, their hundreds of indigenous grape varieties, and their unique wine culture.

In Georgia, known for its epic feasts and toasts, people often experience shemomechama, an untranslatable word for when you are full but you continue eating anyway.

The Three Drinkers explores the history of orange wine as well as what makes it so trendy.

Lost Eden, a red blend aged in traditional clay amphora, is dark and earthy.