Levan Mekhuzla: “We have never had such a well-organized harvest system as this year”
“We are always open to criticism when it is constructive, but sometimes we hear completely unfounded claims that ‘the system is broken.’ In reality, we have never had such a well-organized harvest system as we did this year,” said the Chairman of the National Wine Agency, Levan Mekhuzla, while summarizing the progress of the 2025 harvest.
A few days earlier, the former Chairman of the National Wine Agency, Giorgi Samanishvili, stated that “there are serious problems in the field, and this year’s harvest once again showed that the system is broken.”
In response, Levan Mekhuzla noted that work is already underway to further improve organizational processes for the 2026 harvest.
“By 2026, we plan to implement a pilot project in the Racha region, introducing a ‘grape harvesting permit’ system. This means that winegrowers will know in advance when to harvest and to which winery they should deliver their grapes. A similar model is already successfully used in Spain,” Mekhuzla explained.
He added that the main challenge during the 2025 harvest—long queues of grape-loaded vehicles at wineries—was the result of climatic conditions.
“This was not an excuse, but a fact. Due to a large harvest and rainy weather in both Kakheti and Racha, the optimal harvesting period was shortened, which caused peak-day overloads and increased traffic at wineries—especially during the most active phase, when daily processing reached 10–12 thousand tons. The delivery of grapes to wineries involves registration and technological procedures, which take time, and each winery has specific processing capacity limits,” he said.
As of October 23, 330 thousand tons of grapes had been processed in Georgia’s wine-growing regions—marking the largest harvest recorded in the past 30 years. A total of 21,200 winegrowers took part in the harvest nationwide.
