Frequently Asked Questions
Natural Wine Association was established in Tbilisi in 2017 by Georgian winemakers. The Association is an organization of viticulturists/winemakers who use and recognize only natural, organic, bio or biodynamic methods of viticulture and winemaking.
The main goal of the Association is to connect the Association member winemakers with people interested in organic winemaking. The Association wishes to promote natural wines and support everyone sharing the natural wine philosophy.
Guiding documents of the Association can be downloaded from its official web portal www.nwa.ge
The main goal of joining the Association should be the sharing of the viewpoints and philosophy of the Association.
Membership enables the winemakers to take part in exhibitions with limited access in which only the Association members can participate (for example AMERIMERI and ZERO COMPROMISE exhibitions); besides, membership enables the winemakers to take part in the biggest natural wine exhibition in the world – RAW WINE that takes place in such cities as Los Angeles, Berlin, Tokyo, New York etc. Only the members of the Association or bio certified wine cellars from Georgia can take part in those exhibitions.
Membership in the Association helps local wine buyers identify natural wines and, in many cases, this enables the winemakers to sell their products. Besides, the membership also paves the way for the importers to find natural wines more easily and contact winemakers without intermediaries. However, this does not provide any guarantees in terms of product sales.
Besides, travel agencies and guides often access www.nwa.ge webpage in order to find out whether a specific wine cellar is the member of the Association and whether it produces natural wines. This is the only platform where they can search for natural wines.
Certain criteria need to be met in order to join the Association. If a natural person or a legal entity meets the requirements of the association, only he/she/it can fill the membership application.
Joining the Association is possible through an application submitted by a grape-grower/winemaker. After the submission of the application, vineyard and wine cellar of the membership candidate are inspected. Based on the results of the inspection, the Association makes a decision on accepting a new member.
The application is accompanied with a contract with the candidate for the membership containing detailed information on the Association membership. The application form may be downloaded from the Association’s official web portal www.nwa.ge
An applicant (natural person or legal entity) willing to become the members, has to own yielding vineyard and a functioning wine cellar, this fact has to be substantiated with the submitted documentation – an extract from Public Registry.
Applications may be submitted at any time, however, in order to be included in the inspection schedule, the application must be submitted before April 25 of any given year. Applications submitted after April 25 will be reviewed one year later.
Decisions on accepting new members are made by the majority of the Association founding members. The vineyard and cellar inspection reports of the candidates are presented to them, based on which the founders make decisions on accepting new members. Criteria that the founders use are described in detail in the agreement with candidates.