Resisting Development through Heritage: Identities, Hydropower, and Wine in Lechkhumi, Georgia
Résumés
Cet article examine le rôle du patrimoine viticole et des écologies dans les efforts de résistance locale contre la construction de la centrale hydroélectrique de Namakhvani à Lechkhumi, en Géorgie. Il détaille comment le mouvement anti-barrage dans cette région a été souligné par des pratiques vinicoles localisées, des variables sociales qui ont contribué à renforcer le soutien aux manifestations nationales ultérieures. Il aborde la façon dont des conceptions conflictuelles du patrimoine entrent en conflit avec les conceptions du territoire, de l’espace et du lieu. Ces tensions sont encore accentuées par la longue histoire industrialisée du vin pendant l’Union soviétique, en opposition flagrante aux mouvements contemporains du vin naturel utilisant le patrimoine immatériel reconnu par l’Unesco des qvevri – des récipients en argile en forme d’amphore utilisés pour la fermentation et le stockage du vin. À travers cinq années de travail ethnographique sur le terrain par les deux auteurs, cet article examine le rôle que joue le vin dans l’ancrage des liens locaux avec le lieu. Il situe les conceptions du patrimoine en conversation avec l’hydropolitique étatique et locale. Ce travail combine ainsi des analyses des mouvements politiques locaux visant à entraver la construction de la centrale hydroélectrique de Namakhvani avec une compréhension du patrimoine national géorgien – le vin. Il illustre le rôle crucial que le vin et les pratiques vinicoles ont joué dans le succès du mouvement anti-barrage qui a eu lieu à Lechkhumi. Ce travail contribue à mettre en valeur les conceptualisations non étatiques du lieu et du patrimoine et illustre comment le patrimoine culturel peut s’opposer avec succès aux idéaux homogènes de l’espace et du lieu, en se tournant plutôt vers les façons dont les écologies peuvent aider les humains à construire des avenirs transformateurs.
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- 1 Patrick McGovern et al., “Early Neolithic Wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus”, Proceedings of th (...)
- 2 Julia Csergo, “Food as a Collective Heritage Brand in the Era of Globalization”, International Jour (...)
- 3 Paulina Rytkönen et al., “Tales of Georgian Wine: Storytelling in the Georgian Wine Industry”, Jour (...)
- 4 Melissa F. Baird, “‘The Breath of the Mountain Is My Heart’: Indigenous Cultural Landscapes and the (...)
1Wine is a central marker of Georgian cultural heritage. Georgians claim 8000 years of uninterrupted winemaking based on archaeological fragments of qvevri–amphorae-shaped clay vessels found in southern Georgia, which were used to ferment and store wine.1 Wine consumption, customs, and practices are pervasive and unique. Besides qvevri, this includes clay drinking bowls, hollowed cow horns, and the feast (supra) with sequential toasts. In 2013, UNESCO recognised qvevri winemaking as intangible cultural heritage, cementing these traditions nationally. The state encouraged marketing campaigns centred around wine2 and elevating slogans like ‘8000 Vintages’ and ‘Georgia-Homeland of Wine’ to represent national winemaking heritage. These heritage narratives craft a “territorial identity”3 that links the material culture of wine to history and geography (Ill. 2). Both state and local communities mobilise these same heritage-centric territorial identities in “knowledge claims, nation building, and identity creation” to serve different aims.4
2In the western Georgian region of Lechkhumi, the geography is typified by the Rioni Valley, which is flanked by two limestone massifs, one called Khvamli, a spiritual mountain in Lechkhumi heritage narratives. The Rioni River flows through a valley central to the geography and Lechkhumian conceptions of place. Lechkhumi’s wine heritage reflects its microzone, which produces a unique, semi-sweet variety of the white grape, Tsolikouri. In Lechkhumi, wine and ecology merge to create its territorial identity; locals mobilise a heritage that encompasses the material—Lechkhumi Tsolikouri—and immaterial—the Rioni River Valley’s ecosystem—to lay claim to place. Yet the state has tried to capitalise on Lechkhumi’s territorial identity to develop hydro infrastructure. It proposed to dam the Rioni River and building the Namakhvani Hydro Power Plant (HPP). Local Lechkhumians reacted, establishing a collective called The Rioni Defenders (rionis kheobis gadarchenistvis) to resist dam development. Activism against the dam has an extensive history, but this iteration of the fight between local activists and the government took place from early 2020 until September 2021. Despite the overwhelming material and political resource imbalance between a collection of state and international investors and the opposition, activists successfully stalled development of the dam. As a result, in September 2021, the primary investor, the Turkish company ENKA Construction, pulled out of its agreement. Yet the Georgian state is still eager to build the Namakhvani HPP, and the active resistance that occurred previously has given way to a more embedded local response.
- 5 Nino Gogua and Eka Tsotsoria, “Land-Water (Homeland)”, YouTube, November 25, 2020, Online: https:// (...)
- 6 Georgian State Electrosystem, Ten-Year Network Development Plan of Georgia 2023-2033, Tbilisi, 2023
- 7 International Energy Agency, Georgia 2020: Energy Policy Review, Tbilisi, 2020. Online: https://iea (...)
- 8 Marina Kaganova et al., “Rioni Unchained”, Vimeo, March 20, 2021. Online: https://vimeo.com/5266308 (...)
3Clashing with the state’s desire to dam waterways is the local importance of water. In Lechkhumi, the Rioni River holds mythological and spiritual power in Lechkhumian lives and is a crucial part of local heritage.5 Mariam, a local grape grower and a founding member of the Rioni Defenders, claims that “no one seems to care about these waters. It appears they are not important. They want to sink this place in water.” Georgia is home to over 25,000 waterways, and the state’s many proposed and developing hydropower projects are looking to tap into this natural resource.6 While Georgia used to be able to generate more power than it consumes annually, in recent years, it has needed to import energy from neighbouring countries to keep up with demand.7 As such, multiple Georgian governments have been keen to develop hydropower plants for self-sufficiency. Lechkhumi is one example where territorial identities have been reconfigured as political power to resist the Georgian state. As one Lechkhumi winemaker proclaims: “We are totally opposed, the whole population. We don’t want a dam; we want our wine and our lives.”8
4The intimate connection between wine and water in Lechkhumi has led us to examine how heritage and ecological conceptions of place are mobilised as resistance against the state. As the Rioni Defenders argue, the HPP development would erase this ecosystem and jeopardise the viticultural ecologies it cultivates. This paper shows how resistance to hydro-development in Lechkhumi parallels the state’s interventions in managing Georgian wine heritage and protecting local winemaking practices. Activists see the safeguarding of this heritage as a catalyst for resistance efforts against the Namakhvani HPP. For these activists, protecting their ecosystem serves both tangible (economic, agricultural) and intangible (understanding of place and connection to the past) objectives. This paper examines the intangible heritage of wine and place. It aims to contribute to a sense of how heritage informs and directs resistance efforts against the state.
- 9 David Aprasidze and David Siroky, “Technocratic Populism in Hybrid Regimes: Georgia on my Mind and (...)
- 10 We refer to the state as the governing entity of Georgia, controlled by the Georgian Dream party. W (...)
- 11 Kevin A. Yelvington et al., “Wine Tourism in the Temecula Valley: Neoliberal Development Policies a (...)
5The Georgian state, controlled by the Georgian Dream party (the Dream), led by billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, has been in power since 2012. The Dream is accused of corruption, intense privatisation, anti-Westernism, and pro-Russianism.9 Though the Dream generally has strong rural support, the privatisation of Georgian land is a significant point of dispute in regions like Lechkhumi, where the state sold their land to build the Namakhvani HPP.10 How is place mobilised when resisting privatisation and industrialisation? What happens when UNESCO recognises intangible heritage like qvevri winemaking, but that same heritage does not encompass place-based ecologies? Analysing local forms of resistance through wine can help us better understand the paradoxes of state development and how wine becomes a central focus in discourses about place.11 Thus, this paper shows how local communities mobilise intangible heritage in efforts to stand against the state and protect land and place.
- 12 Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, Albuquerque (...)
- 13 Jo Lee and Tim Ingold, “Fieldwork on Foot: Perceiving, Routing, Socializing”, in Simon Coleman and (...)
6This paper is based on fieldwork in the Lechkhumi region from 2019 to 2024. We conducted over twenty long-form interviews with Lechkhumi winemakers, wine professionals, and residents in Lechkhumi’s central village, Tvishi. Visiting with locals at their wineries, guesthouses, and homes, we spent time in kitchens and cellars, utilising tourism as an anthropological approach to understand localised knowledge of place and place-making.12 We gathered local impressions of place and ecologies by applying ethnographic methodologies of walking the land.13 In addition, we conducted interviews with political activists and local scholars and analysed both social media from protest movements and state policies for hydropower and wine development.
- 14 Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon, Oakland, (...)
7Drawing on this data, we argue that the Rioni Defenders’ resistance movement against the Namakhvani HPP was successful through its appeal to intangible heritage; grape growing and winemaking were necessary to the resistance efforts. However, we also illustrate how local heritage claims extend beyond wine to the land. In the first section, we situate our argument in social scientific discussions on space, place, and its relationship to heritage. We argue for a non-territorial, non-state-based understanding of “space” by showing how a localised conception of “place” grounded in heritage better serves analyses of the resistance movement. Resistance can be the product of land grabs and forceful remaking of spaces, but it is also “premised on ecologies” that include human communities and collaborations, “the creative, more-than-human ability to stay alive”.14 In the section that follows, we show how the industrial histories of wine and hydropower as heritage continue to frame resistance in the current day. Next, we discuss the paradoxes of intangible heritage as well as claims to authenticity by arguing that the state’s emphasis on industrialisation co-opts the land. Local winemakers resist this appropriation through their own constitution of authentic heritage. Lastly, we take two cases of resistance—a wine cooperative and the Lechkhumi wine festival—as emblematic of how enacting heritage has served as a means to resist the state. While the government is pushing for infrastructural and ecological change in the Rioni Valley, the people connected to it use wine and local ecologies to organise community action and draw attention to the region.
Resisting the State: Space, Place, & Heritage
- 15 John Agnew, “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory”, (...)
- 16 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991.
- 17 Jonna Petterson, The Question of Political Community: Sameness, Logos, Space, Lanham, Rowman and Li (...)
8The tangible political outcomes that arise from the linkage between heritage and ecology illustrate how competing understandings of space can produce conflict between the state and local populations. This claim is grounded in John Agnew’s concept of the “territorial trap,”15 which posits that states are conceived as capsules of territory that govern a populous. This concept presumes static understandings of space rather than fluid conceptualisations. Agnew’s work was inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s theorisation of the production of space. Lefebvre argues that space is not a geometrically determined concept; abstractly, space is lived, enacted, material, and representational.16 This is to say that space is a living thing, and those interacting with space determine its form. Lived understandings of space are informed by its more concrete manifestations: economic, sociological, ecological, political, commercial, national, and global.17 As Agnew argues, the concept of the territorial trap assumes that the state produces a complex space and maintains homogenous control over territory. Indeed, a core ambition of this paper is to show that the success of the Namakhvani HPP resistance requires a complex understanding of space. While the state and transnational companies are essential actors, the local population of the Rioni Valley sits at the centre of this work. Local understandings of space contradict how the state and development companies backing the Namakhvani HPP interact with the territory that the dam would transform.
- 18 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed(...)
- 19 Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape”, World Archaeology, vol. 25, no 2, 1993, p. 152-74. (...)
- 20 Kenneth Olwig, “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape”, Annals of the Association of Ameri (...)
9James Scott argues that a state view of nature and development is limited due to the parameters by which states approach space (land, cities, villages). Scott argues that states are driven by standardisation; however, standardisation presents gaps that create space for populations to formally and informally resist.18 We see the Namakhvani HPP resistance as originating in that gap, and we engage with this gap by conceptualising “space” as “place.” As Tim Ingold posits, many places constitute a landscape, which is not “space” but is co-constituted by human dwelling, tasks, and sociality.19 Thus, we place analytical emphasis on the potency that community practices and identity enactments can have in the face of governmental and transnational ambitions. The manifestation of social community on the landscape illustrates the crucial meanings of personal and political identities connected to place. It calls attention to how territory should be a central analysis point while considering the different social identities articulated through land.20 Analysing place becomes essential, as it not only leads to deeper understandings of why local resistances exists, but also because state development threatens local conceptions of place. It is here that intangible heritage plays a role in theorising space and is mobilised by resistance movements.
- 21 Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches, London, Routledge, 2013.
- 22 Ibid., p. 204.
- 23 Melissa F. Baird, “‘The Breath of the Mountain Is My Heart’”, art. cit.
- 24 Haidy Geismar, “Anthropology and Heritage Regimes”, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 44, no 1, 2 (...)
10Anthropological literature on heritage has theorised the role of place and landscape in conceptually defining heritage. The perception of the landscape as having “universal value” for marginalised groups has resulted in UNESCO’s incorporation of landscapes into the recognition of intangible heritage.21 The interaction between human and nonhuman actors and environments creates “dialogical heritage,”22 a way in which heritage can be connected to broader ecological and environmental issues and can build transformative futures. Considering that in Lechkhumi, the Rioni River, Khvamli, and other places on the landscape hold agency, heritage must be seen produced from multiple subjects, including nonhuman ones. In the case of the Namakhvani HPP, where the state and local communities contest the remaking of place, the landscape plays a role in knowledge production and claims to heritage.23 Alongside humans, nonhuman forms of heritage are implicated in “heritage regimes,”24 in which heritage is expanded into governance through legitimising ownership of the past. The Georgian state’s heritage regime is enacted, in part, through UNESCO’s recognition of intangible heritage, which celebrates Georgian wine internationally with new forms of cultural, social, and geographical recognition. But with such recognition, the state can extend that regime into a complete ecological reconfiguration of the landscape.
- 25 Pamela McElwee, Forests are Gold: Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam, Seattle, Univer (...)
- 26 Nino Gogua and Eka Tsotsoria, “Land-Water (Homeland)”, op. cit.
11As our interlocutors have stated, the contestation of space and place is central to the political and ecological discord in Lechkhumi. On one side of this competition are the state and international investors who view space as territory. As a concept, the state uses territory for “environmental rule”.25 As such, from a state perspective, the land along the Rioni Valley holds the potential to meet growing energy demands. However, locals challenge this vision of space, contesting that the Rioni Valley is not territory but a place of heritage and identity. In such a place, produce, wildlife, flora and fauna, especially vineyards, take on heightened importance; they are a tangible embodiment of heritage.26 From this perspective, the state’s understanding of space, as expressed by Agnew and Scott, is rejected. When the place connected to heritage is threatened, as was the case of the Namakhvani HPP, intangible heritage becomes tangible and drives resistance against threats.
A Heritage of Industrialisation
- 27 Lisa Granik, The Wines of Georgia, Oxford, Infinite Ideas, 2019.
- 28 Adam Walker and Paul Manning, “Georgian Wine: The Transformation of Socialist Quantity into Postsoc (...)
- 29 Tsolikouri was a popular grape used to make sparkling wine under the Soviets. It is still the most (...)
- 30 Stephen V. Bittner, Whites and Reds: A History of Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar, Oxford, (...)
12In the spring of 2023, we toured an abandoned wine factory just outside Tvishi, across the road from the embankment of the roaring Rioni River. Khavmli loomed in the background in what was now a lush, overgrown plot with decrepit buildings (Ill. 3). Interlocutors told us that the Soviet state built the Tvishi wine factory around the 1960s; it closed down shortly after Georgian independence in the early 1990s. Industrialised wine factories were abundant during the Soviet Union, particularly in Georgia, and operated at different parts of the supply chain.27 Local growers sold their grapes to these factories, though our interlocutors’ oral accounts tell us that most were still producing small amounts for domestic consumption. While home production was a form of resistance to Soviet industrial practices, factories defined place, elevating local wines through place-based labels attached to the factory’s location.28 In Lechkhumi, the Soviets produced a semi-sweet white known as Tvishi Tsolikouri.29 Tsolikouri’s semi-sweet flavour profile suits the high acidity of the variety, but, historically, it fitted consumer desires in the Soviet centre that preferred sweeter wines, a holdover from Russian imperial times.30
- 31 Lisa Granik, The Wines of Georgia, op. cit.
- 32 Vladimir Tr. Hafstein, Making Intangible Heritage: El Condor Pasa and Other Stories from UNESCO, Bl (...)
- 33 There is little academic literature on this topic, but see, for example, “Georgian winemakers again (...)
13The 1990s were a tumultuous time for Georgia. With post-Soviet de-collectivisation, state-level reforms parcelled the land, and local farmers shifted to more familial-based farming; industrial wineries took over the role of Soviet wine factories.31 These industrial producers, to this day, mainly export to Russia. However, following UNESCO’s recognition of qvevri winemaking in 2013, there came a transformation of Georgian national identity that elevated and promoted qvevri above all else as Georgian winemaking heritage. The recognition of qvevri as intangible heritage, in turn, represents Georgia’s winemaking history as one of traditional heritage practices, compressing its past to its present and often sweeping over the Soviet period and the entanglements it fostered in the current-day market.32 Yet, qvevri winemaking’s resurgence embodied resistance to industrial wine production and historical ties to Soviet industrialisation. Small wineries mobilised qvevri winemaking as part of the natural wine community and refused to export their wines to Russia, a move perceived as opposing ongoing state support for industrial production.33
- 34 Jeff Sahadeo, “Author of Voices from the Soviet Edge”, Podcast, 1869. Online: https://soundcloud.co (...)
- 35 Jimsher Rekhviashvili, “Sakartvelos hesst’oria sabch’ota pesvebit [Georgia’s Hydro-history with Sov (...)
- 36 Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture Georgia, Nov 12, 2019. Online: https://mepa.gov. (...)
- 37 Giorgi Lanchava and Salome Shubladze, Violations, Inconsistencies, and Unsubstantiated Concessions: (...)
- 38 Outside the case of Namakhvani, resistance efforts have disrupted and halted the development of pro (...)
14Development of, and resistance to, hydropower in Georgia has a similar historical trajectory. For a state, turning waterways into energy sources for power development fits into a territorial understanding of space. However, for local communities, much more than territory and energy potential can be tied to such locations. Hydropower came to Georgia at the end of the 19th century. The subsequent Soviet state significantly pushed growth in the hydropower industry, arguing that Georgia would modernise and provide domestic power for its citizens;34 hydropower became the primary source of electricity during the Soviet period. The Soviet state launched the Namakhvani HPP project in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, resistance movements successfully thwarted the construction.35 The current iteration of the Namakhvani HPP is a planned 433MW dam to be built in the Rioni River Valley in the centre of Lechkhumi. The government declared that all necessary environmental and social impact assessments had been conducted and that there were no substantial risks to developing the HPP.36 Tbilisi-based experts resisted the state’s findings, casting substantial doubt on the findings of the environmental impact assessments.37 In collaboration with ENKA, the state convinced a majority of the Rioni Valley population to sell their properties and relocate. However, some refused to sell based on land claims and ownership; this population started to organise resistance to the HPP.38
- 39 Georgianjournal.ge, “Namakhvani HPP Building Company Terminates Contract”, Georgian Journal, Septem (...)
- 40 Nick Baigent, The Sound of Money: Hydropower and Local Resistance in the Republic of Georgia, Malmö (...)
15The Namakhvani HPP resistance movement started in 2019 with Lechkhumi locals encamped along the road where development was planned. Over time, this protest movement grew, drawing people from around Georgia. The resistance encompassed a myriad of dissident voices. This multitude of perspectives would ultimately shatter the strength of the anti-Namakhvani protests as a national movement, but not before their resistance caused ENKA’s withdrawal from the Namakhvani contract.39 At a national level, resistance to the dam drew support due to low trust in ENKA and widespread dissatisfaction with the Dream. Low institutional trust drives scepticism about the safety of development, the motives for development, and the promises made for the quality of relocation to would-be-impacted population groups.40 The history of the Namakhvani HPP and its resistance exemplifies how locals can centre displacement from the land and its ecologies to fight against state heritage regimes.
16Lechkhumi’s histories of wine and water illustrate two heritage regimes operating locally, both central to understanding how local claims to heritage come into opposition with the state. Through industrialisation and development, the state aims to detach Lechkhumians from their land and intangible heritage. Yet, for Lechkhumians, wine and the land are tangible parts of their heritage that they refuse to let go of. In the following section, we examine how, as the authenticity of Lechkhumi is called into question, the legacy of Soviet industrialisation is why Lechkhumians turn to their ecological landscape as the basis of their cultural heritage.
Paradoxes of Heritage: Authenticity and Land
- 41 Amy B. Trubek, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir, Berkeley, University of Califor (...)
- 42 Eric J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger (dir.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge Universi (...)
17Over the course of the last year, in personal conversations well-known wine writers, sommeliers, and wine tourism professionals have called the Lechkhumi region “made-up,” “unreal,” or “fake.” These “tastemakers” accuse Lechkhumi wines of being manipulated for Russian export markets.41 In doing so, tastemakers explicitly associate Lechkhumi wine with its Soviet industrialised history. As knowledge producers and definers of terroir, these tastemakers have established Lechkhumi as a territory of inauthenticity. This association is paradoxical to so-called authentic heritage claims around qvevri winemaking. Qvevri, as authentic, is a sentiment well-recognised by these same tastemakers, valorised, and protected by UNESCO. Yet, qvevri winemaking clearly exemplifies an “invented tradition”42 and is an element of the state’s heritage regime. In this section, we argue that because of the paradoxes around state-recognised heritage regimes, Lechkhumians conceptualise their land, not qvevri as authentic intangible heritage.
- 43 Mathijs Pelkmans, Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgi (...)
- 44 Stephen Bittner, Whites and Reds, op. cit., p. 238.
- 45 Adam Walker and Paul Manning, “Georgian Wine: The Transformation of Socialist Quantity into Postsoc (...)
- 46 Heather Paxson, The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America, Berkeley, University of Cal (...)
- 47 Sarah Bowen, Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production, Oakland, University (...)
18After the fall of the Soviet Union, with new forms of markets and demarcations of autonomous Republics, counterfeit goods became a pressing issue in Georgia.43 In 2006, the Russian state embargoed Georgian wine, claiming falsification.44 In part to counteract these claims, in 2007, the state’s wine regulatory body, the National Wine Agency (NWA), recognised Tvishi as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) (Ill. 4). The NWA created a set of regulations for growing and producing in Tvishi and territorialised where Tvishi Tsolikouri comes from. The NWA perceives PDOs as ensuring authenticity,45 reasoning that PDOs protect local terroir or place-based ecologies of food.46 However, PDOs and other place-based labels tend to benefit industrial producers,47 reifying Lechkhumi’s associations with its industrial past. Furthermore, PDOs effectively replaced the names and labels of the Soviet wines. The label “Tvishi”, in the Soviet Union, became Tvishi PDO in the current day and includes only two major villages in the region: Tvishi and Alpana. Yet, local winemakers have larger conceptualizations of the Tvishi PDO and perceive their villages, vines, and wines as part of the Tvishi microzone. Authenticity becomes another state-regulated heritage regime, bolstered by misconceptualisations of Lechkhumi’s heritage and localised ecologies.
Ill. 4. The Tvishi Protected Designation of Origin Region, shown in lilac.
This official map includes only two villages: Tvishi and Alpana (ალპანა), northeast of Tvishi. Georgian National Wine Agency Website. https://wine.gov.ge/En/Files/Download/15337.
- 48 Anne Meneley, “Blood, Sweat and Tears in a Bottle of Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil”, Food, Cul (...)
- 49 There is no industrial production within Lechkhumi. Many industrial wineries producing Tvishi Tsoik (...)
- 50 Marina Kaganova et al., “Rioni Unchained”, online cite, 6:59.
19The ongoing heritage regime of PDOs is part of the state’s territorial trap. To this day, Lechkhumi holds the reputation of growing grapes for industrial production. Growers continue to sell their grapes to industrial producers, where wines are made in factory settings and sweetened with additives. These producers capitalise on place as value, marketing Tvishi PDO and the landscape (Ill. 5). Yet, industrial production complicates place-based heritage narratives by detaching food from place.48 In Lechkhumi, industrialisation displaces the grapes from Lechkhumi and moves them to other regions for processing and production.49 In essence, this is the same alientaion many Lechkhumians would face if the Namakhvani HPP were to be built. This detachment and inconsistent use of heritage narratives, the landscape on the one hand, and PDOs on the other, reveal gaps in the heritage regime where resistance can take place. Makuna, a natural qvevri winemaker in Tvishi, explains that five major wine factories come every fall and pay almost double the local price for Tvishi Tsolikouri because “on our land, it shows its value.”50 Makuna owns less than a hectare of vineyards in Tvishi and is one of the few who refuse to sell their grapes, instead mobilising qvevri winemaking and the land as resistance to industrial tendencies. Makuna’s insight points to the importance of land for Lechkhumi wine production and how the land’s value has been co-opted by industrial producers as a marketing tactic. Elevating place as heritage in industrial production hides this detachment and highlights industrialisation’s ongoing influence on Lechkhumi’s wine economy.
Ill. 5. Tvishi Tsolikouri labels from industrial wineries.
Label on left includes “Appellation of Origin” at the bottom right. Right label depicts the Khvamli massif at the top.
Photographs by authors.
- 51 Natural Wine Association. Online: https://nwa.ge/en/about.
20Many producers like Makuna, however, do not fall into the territorial trap of the Tvishi PDO. While the official NWA map outlines a small territory demarcated as the PDO, our interlocutors include additional villages in their microzone, and while they see Tvishi Tsolikouri as naturally semi-sweet, some winemakers have started producing a dry variation, in part to market to a new consumer, and as we see it, resist to these claims of Sovietism and industrialisation that continue to haunt them. Makuna, for example, is now arguably Lechkhumi’s most well-known winemaker; she travels to Europe for wine fairs, exports globally, and attends domestic festivals. Makuna is part of the region’s budding natural wine movement, which often uses qvevri but is ideologically more interested in ecocentric viticulture.51 The region’s winemaking history illustrates dialogical heritage: the landscape participates in recrafting heritage narratives to work against a reputation of industrial winemaking. As such, ecology and wine heritage become intertwined forms of resistance against the industrialisation both of the wine industry and of the Rioni Valley’s landscape. By not falling into the territorial trap, these winemakers are recrafting their heritage against legacy narratives and centring the land rather than heritage production methods. These localised forms of place-making through wine reflect how Lechkhumi winemakers are resisting state-determined markers of Lechkhumi as a space while also coopting ecological heritage to redefine the region’s relationship to industrialisation.
- 52 Marina Kaganova et al., “Rioni Unchained”, online cite, 15:17 to 17:52.
- 53 In Georgian, the Soviets are often referred to as the Communists (k’omunist’ebi).
21The claims of Lechkhumi’s inauthenticity and ongoing reification of the region’s connection to Soviet industrialisation, propped up by current-day wine production, illustrate a paradox when considered in parallel with local conceptions of heritage and place. As a Lechkhumi villager explains, in the 1960s, Tvishi Tsolikouri was named one of the best wines from Georgia and sold in Europe for well over 200 Euros a bottle. He argues that the quality of Lechkhumi wine, if elevated in the international market to its historic status, can bring the region more profit than the Namakhvani dam could. He believes Tvishi wine deserves this status: “This is not just the Georgian people’s heritage; it belongs to the whole world”52. This sentiment is echoed by Guram, a winemaker who reminisces about Tvishi during the Soviet period; his village was full of life, and there was public infrastructure and social celebrations. He concluded, “I’m happy now; I have enough by tending my land … but this region was more during the Communists”53. Guram’s narrative emphasises the stark differences in infrastructure felt by locals, not confined to wine but expanded into place. As we left Guram’s place after a wine tasting and dinner, he toasted:
What connected us to each other and will save Sakartvelo [Georgia] is the Rioni Valley. Cheers to the Rioni Defenders and all supporters of it. Let us always defend everything like this. As for now, it [the Namakhvani HPP construction] has stopped. Who knows what will happen later? But anyway, cheers to the guardians of the country… Cheers to the Rioni Defenders!
- 54 Guntra A. Aistara, Organic Sovereignties: Struggles over Farming in an Age of Free Trade, Seattle, (...)
- 55 Neringa Klumbytė, “The Soviet Sausage Renaissance”, American Anthropologist, vol. 112, no 1, 2010, (...)
22Guram sees resistance as premised on the ecologies that connect people and place: the Rioni Defenders, the Valley, and Georgia. Through the heritage of toasting with wine, Guram shows the connection between place, the land, and his heritage. These ecologies are a part of place-making in Lechkhumi, emblematic of broader farmer and village sentiments that form resistance to the state.54 The paradox of Guram’s sentiment that muses about “better Soviet times”55 while also supporting local resistance to the HPP exemplifies how gaps in heritage regimes are filled with authentic conceptions of the land’s role in Lechkhumi ecologies.
- 56 Elizabeth Barham, “Translating Terroir: The Global Challenge of French AOC Labelling”, Journal of R (...)
23The land, though, is haunted by these paradoxes of authenticity. In a Facebook video from May 2023, Mariam posted a live stream as a heavy downpour caused flooding and landslides, rendering the only road in the Rioni Valley unpassable. The state has consistently refused to pave the road, stating that ENKA still owns parts of it. Locals, however, claim that the state uses this as an excuse to maintain control of the land and a way to restart dam construction. In the video, Mariam is sobbing and cries out to the state: “Why are you submitting this beautiful place to this poor treatment?” A slew of comments echoes her frustrations, with one stating: “The alienation of Georgian land must be stopped!” [kartuli mits’ebis gaskhviseba unda shets’q’des!] The state’s involvement in protecting Tvishi’s grapes through a PDO is ironic, given its negligence toward the Tvishi ecosystem. Place-based labels can be used to re-embed products into the land and establish an explicit connection between place and the foodstuffs produced there56. Yet, the state’s disregard and tastemakers’ ambivalence towards Lechkhumi’s existence only undermines Lechkhumian claims that there is a connection between their place and their wine. As Mariam expressed, “When something loses simplicity, it tends to become inauthentic (q’albi).” A PDO system and the HPP, as extensions of the state’s heritage regimes, threaten the authenticity of Lehckhumi’s ecosystem. De-emphasising materials like qvevri or politicking-orientated organisations like UNESCO in their heritage narratives, Lechkhumians instead illuminate their landscape: the Rioni River, Khvamli and the surrounding ecosystem as forms of resistance to the state.
Enacting Heritage and Defying the State
24Although the Rioni Defenders’ movement is no longer as large, people remain committed to sustainable and localised regional development. Recently, some Rioni Defenders participants set up a wine cooperative, aiming to bring together Lechkhumi grape growers and winemakers to produce local wines, especially Tvishi Tsolikouri. Mariam’s son, Koba, helped found this initiative. Currently, the cooperative has eight people from nearby villages. As Koba tells us, they founded the cooperative in part to defend the reputation of Lechkhumi:
They say [one of] the reasons why they want to build the dam is that the place is not famous and there’s nothing good here, and they talk about it like it was just wasteland. But we want to prove that we can cooperate and make something that can promote local products, especially wine. Because Tvishi wine is unique, and there’s a microzone that is endangered.
- 57 Anne Meneley, “Blood, Sweat and Tears in a Bottle of Palestinian Extra-Virigin Olive Oil”, art. cit
- 58 Heather Paxson, The Life of Cheese, op cit.
25The state’s narratives of “wasteland” reify a territorial trap by insinuating that nothing valuable comes from the land; thus, it can be sold and exploited.57 The Rioni cooperative aims not only to prove this claim false but also to improve the quality of products that come out of Lechkhumi by sharing technologies, methodologies, knowledge, and production spaces. This is a dialogical reconstruction of Lechkhumi’s heritage narratives: grapes are the fruit of the land, encouraging these young people to establish a wine cooperative. In return, the cooperative aims to protect that environment and show its connection to the land. The relationship represents an “ecology of production” that perceives the land as a collaborator.58 Koba explained: “The state is trying to make people leave here, and we want to show them that this place is really important for Georgia and the economy, and people should not leave.” The cooperative’s primary goal is to promote Lechkhumi as a whole, as a region that exists and has value, compared to the government projects they feel are attempting to erase Lechkhumi.
- 59 The state has not supported the development of small wineries in Lechkhumi, nor does it generally o (...)
- 60 Robert C. Ulin, “Cooperation or Cooptation: A Southwest French Wine Cooperative”, Dialectical Anthr (...)
26As we have shown, the state refuses to invest in Lechkhumi in ways locals desire will preserve its importance and ecological integrity. Thus, we argue that the Rioni wine cooperative is a reaction to the state’s apathy and lack of support for localised production in the Lechkhumi region.59 The informality of wine cooperatives creates a networked infrastructure that builds community around winemaking and wine production.60 As Koba states, people need to talk about the products that come from a place–its heritage. These unique agricultural products are often seen as unimportant, especially when the state can profit off the land by damming it. Thus, we consider the Rioni wine cooperative a form of resistance to the state and a way to redefine local intangible heritage that pushes back on state-based heritage regimes of PDOs and UNESCO recognitions. The Rioni wine cooperative also points to how this solidarity movement is centred around the ecosystem of Lechkhumi rather than specifically on qvevri winemaking or the Tvishi PDO.
- 61 Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape”, art. cit.
27As a manifestation of this resistance, in June 2023 cooperative members helped organise the 2023 Lechkhumi Wine Festival (Ill. 6). They established a GoFundMe, providing background information on the Namakhvani HPP project, Lechkhumi wines, and motivation behind the festival. The donation page stated that the festival’s aim “is not only promoting and preserving local products, but also saving the valley, the culture, values, and way of life. All these elements are at risk of disappearing, the Festival is our effort to save them!” The organisers chose to highlight Lechkhumi’s intangible and tangible heritage: wine, food, and local handicrafts set next to vineyards on the bank of the Rioni River with Khvamli overlooking the event. Koba expresses that the festival is important because it “is a way to attract people and make them understand what they will lose. They should know that this place has potential.” The festival represented the organisers and Rioni Defenders’ vision for the valley, which celebrates the region and what it produces rather than fundamentally changing its ecosystem. The landscape also formed the basis of the social solidarity that planned and implemented the festival.61 Koba was a key organising member; Guram poured his wine; Makuna tasted and talked with guests; and Mariam was interviewed by local and international press.
Ill. 6. The 2023 Lechkhumi Wine Festival held on the bank of the Rioni.
Khvamli is in the background; the vineyards are hidden by foliage.
Photograph by authors.
28The Lechkhumi wine festival’s community organisation, centred around its own political agenda, translates into resistance against external factors defining how Lechkhumi is perceived. The festival’s emphasis on material culture shows that Lechkhumians are eager to have their place recognised for its intangible heritage. Its location on the bank of the Rioni and under the shadows of Khvamli exemplifies the centrality of land to Lechkhumians and the interconnectedness of tangible and intangible forms of Lechkhumi heritage. The role of Rioni Defenders in the planning and implementation of the festival depicts the close ties between wine, the land, and forms of resistance against the state.
- 62 Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War, op. cit., p. 10.
29The Lechkhumi wine festival commemorates Lechkhumi’s heritage and specifically connects it to the landscape and local ecosystem. The work that the wine cooperative and festival organising committee are doing to protect their valley, its reputation, and its wine is emblematic of dialogical heritage and illustrates how this heritage is a crucial part of Lechkhumi’s ecologies of production. The tangibility of Lechkhumi heritage, as mobilised against the state, shows how resistance is not only political, “it is the grounds (and the very possibility) of life.”62 Humans and their landscape are building a transformative future for Lechkhumi wine and the Rioni Valley without help from the state and distancing themselves from the state’s heritage regime towards one that is Valley-centric.
⁂
30This work engages with the idea that territorially defined understandings of space are limited in explaining how small populations can obstruct and resist the state—a materially more powerful actor. Although the state is conceptualised as a collection of people, relationships, and groups, as it pertains to Namakhvani HPP, the state is understood to have acted as a powerful institution pushing unwanted ecological change in Lechkhumi. The state’s actions highlight a tension between the institution and the local population, which resulted in resistance efforts against the HPP. Through the examination of these resistances, this paper has illustrated some of the ways in which understandings of place, grounded in conceptualisations of heritage and histories, have informed efforts to evade and counter the state. How Lechkhumians transform their intangible heritage into tangible forms of resistance show the complexities of how intangible heritage is conceptualised, coopted, and reimagined. Yet another paradox lies in the symbiotic relationship between the state and industrial wineries that continue to extract from the Lechkhumi ecosystem. The complexities of industrial wine production induce further questions about how intangible cultural heritage becomes tangled in state politics and whether resistance to industrial winemaking might equate to resistance to the state.
31The romanticisation of the landscape and the conservation of place, while lofty in their ideals, are ways to ensure the continuation of one’s livelihood. By refusing state regulatory norms like PDOs and centering the landscape in their heritage discourses, Lechkhumians resist state heritage regimes, crafting their own dialogical heritage that intersects with historical practices and traditions, and land preservation. As Lechkhumi becomes better-known in the wine industry, a shift away from industrial practices and histories does not necessarily align with co-opting state-supported heritage norms like qvevri; instead, it may focus on ecological viticultural practices. These approaches pivot around Lechkhumi heritage and place-making rather than state-sponsored narratives. This heritage is not only useful in selling this landscape, but as an ideal identity, but, as shown through the events against the Namakhvani HPP, it is a powerful organisational and motivational force for protecting land and place. This article has articulated just one of the ways in which heritage and land practices can drive resistance against state ambitions for development.
Notes
1 Patrick McGovern et al., “Early Neolithic Wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, no 48, 2017, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714728114.
2 Julia Csergo, “Food as a Collective Heritage Brand in the Era of Globalization”, International Journal of Cultural Property, vol. 25, no 4, 2018, p. 449-468. DOI: 10.1017/S0940739118000322.
3 Paulina Rytkönen et al., “Tales of Georgian Wine: Storytelling in the Georgian Wine Industry”, Journal of Wine Research, no 2, 2021, p. 117-133. DOI: 10.1080/09571264.2021.1940903.
4 Melissa F. Baird, “‘The Breath of the Mountain Is My Heart’: Indigenous Cultural Landscapes and the Politics of Heritage”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 19, no 4, 2013, p. 327-340. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.663781, p. 328. Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels, Mobilizing Heritage: Anthropological Practice and Transnational Prospects, Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 2018.
5 Nino Gogua and Eka Tsotsoria, “Land-Water (Homeland)”, YouTube, November 25, 2020, Online: https://youtu.be/5l-JaWVA7d8?si=VL8WNcJURZqQNcy5 and https://youtu.be/Ud5R1GDGBYM?si=pIzVopvinHw2qAkS.
6 Georgian State Electrosystem, Ten-Year Network Development Plan of Georgia 2023-2033, Tbilisi, 2023.
7 International Energy Agency, Georgia 2020: Energy Policy Review, Tbilisi, 2020. Online: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/24da4104-6971-4cde-99d3-630f455ae2c3/Georgia_2020_Energy_Policy_Review.pdf.
8 Marina Kaganova et al., “Rioni Unchained”, Vimeo, March 20, 2021. Online: https://vimeo.com/526630820, 6:33.
9 David Aprasidze and David Siroky, “Technocratic Populism in Hybrid Regimes: Georgia on my Mind and in my Pocket”, Politics and Governance, vol. 8, no 4, 2020, p. 580-589. DOI: 10.17645/pag.v8i4.3370.
10 We refer to the state as the governing entity of Georgia, controlled by the Georgian Dream party. While some oppositionist politicians have spoken up on behalf of Lechkhumi, the parliamentary nature of Georgian governance, which the Dream controls, means that opposition voices have little to no power. While the Dream is known to pour money into developing rural areas before elections, they favour regions that will pledge support to their party, of which Lechkhumi is not one.
11 Kevin A. Yelvington et al., “Wine Tourism in the Temecula Valley: Neoliberal Development Policies and Their Contradictions”, Anthropology in Action, vol. 19, no 3, 2012, p. 49-65. DOI: 10.3167/aia.2012.190305.
12 Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
13 Jo Lee and Tim Ingold, “Fieldwork on Foot: Perceiving, Routing, Socializing”, in Simon Coleman and Peter Collins (dir.), Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, Oxford, Berg, 2006, p. 67-85.
14 Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon, Oakland, University of California Press, 2022, p. 10.
15 John Agnew, “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory”, Review of International Political Economy, vol. 1, no 1, 1994, p. 53-80. DOI: 10.1080/09692299408434268.
16 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991.
17 Jonna Petterson, The Question of Political Community: Sameness, Logos, Space, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2018.
18 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999; James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992.
19 Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape”, World Archaeology, vol. 25, no 2, 1993, p. 152-74. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1993.9980235.
20 Kenneth Olwig, “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 86, no 4, 1996, p. 630-653.
21 Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches, London, Routledge, 2013.
22 Ibid., p. 204.
23 Melissa F. Baird, “‘The Breath of the Mountain Is My Heart’”, art. cit.
24 Haidy Geismar, “Anthropology and Heritage Regimes”, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 44, no 1, 2015, p. 71-85. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014217.
25 Pamela McElwee, Forests are Gold: Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2016.
26 Nino Gogua and Eka Tsotsoria, “Land-Water (Homeland)”, op. cit.
27 Lisa Granik, The Wines of Georgia, Oxford, Infinite Ideas, 2019.
28 Adam Walker and Paul Manning, “Georgian Wine: The Transformation of Socialist Quantity into Postsocialist Quality”, in Rachel E. Black and Robert C. Ulin (dir.), Wine and Culture: Vineyard to Glass, New Delhi, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 201-219.
29 Tsolikouri was a popular grape used to make sparkling wine under the Soviets. It is still the most commonly cultivated white variety in western Georgia.
30 Stephen V. Bittner, Whites and Reds: A History of Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021.
31 Lisa Granik, The Wines of Georgia, op. cit.
32 Vladimir Tr. Hafstein, Making Intangible Heritage: El Condor Pasa and Other Stories from UNESCO, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2018.
33 There is little academic literature on this topic, but see, for example, “Georgian winemakers against Russian law”, Marani, August 3, 2023, Online: http://en.vinoge.com/georgian-winemakers-against-russian-law. Ivan Nechepurenko, “Georgian Winemakers, Long Tied to Russia, Drift Toward West”, New York Times, Nov 29, 2024, Online: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/world/europe/georgia-russia-wine-sanctions.html.
34 Jeff Sahadeo, “Author of Voices from the Soviet Edge”, Podcast, 1869. Online: https://soundcloud.com/1869thecuppodcast/1869-ep-74-with-jeff-sahadeo-author-of-voices-from-the-soviet-edge.
35 Jimsher Rekhviashvili, “Sakartvelos hesst’oria sabch’ota pesvebit [Georgia’s Hydro-history with Soviet Roots]”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 28, 2021, Online: https://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/a/31226889.html. Rekhviashvili points out that although the village where the HPP is to be built is called Namokhvani, the state refers to it as Namakhvani. He criticises it as being a “copy-paste” from Russian, implying that the state will continue its alleged close ties to Russia as it restarts development. For consistency, we chose to use Namakhvani HPP.
36 Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture Georgia, Nov 12, 2019. Online: https://mepa.gov.ge/Ge/PublicInformation/17104.
37 Giorgi Lanchava and Salome Shubladze, Violations, Inconsistencies, and Unsubstantiated Concessions: A Brief History of the Namakhvani HPP Cascade Project, Tbilisi, Social Justice Center, 2021.
38 Outside the case of Namakhvani, resistance efforts have disrupted and halted the development of projects in Svaneti and Adjara. Ryan D. Wyeth. “White Coal Nation? Resource-making, identity, and hegemony in the struggle over Georgia’s hydropower development”, PhD diss., Durham University, 2022. Salome Dundua and Tamar Karaia, “The ‘No to Khudoni hydro power plant!’ Social Movement in Georgia”, Romanian Political Science Review, vol. 19, no 2, 2019, p. 215-235. Nino Antadze and Kety Gujaraidze, “The role of traditional rituals in resisting energy injustice: The case of hydropower developments in Svaneti, Georgia”, Energy Research and Social Science, vol. 79, 2021.
39 Georgianjournal.ge, “Namakhvani HPP Building Company Terminates Contract”, Georgian Journal, September 23, 2021. Online: https://georgianjournal.ge/society/37375-namakhvani-hpp-building-company-terminates-contract.html#google_vignette.
40 Nick Baigent, The Sound of Money: Hydropower and Local Resistance in the Republic of Georgia, Malmö, Malmö University Press, 2025.
41 Amy B. Trubek, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009, p. 21.
42 Eric J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger (dir.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
43 Mathijs Pelkmans, Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia: Culture & Society after Socialism, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2006; Paul Manning, The Semiotics of Drink and Drinking, London, Bloomsbury, 2012; Mathijs Pelkmans, Defending the Border, op. cit.
44 Stephen Bittner, Whites and Reds, op. cit., p. 238.
45 Adam Walker and Paul Manning, “Georgian Wine: The Transformation of Socialist Quantity into Postsocialist Quality”, art. cit.
46 Heather Paxson, The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2013.
47 Sarah Bowen, Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production, Oakland, University of California Press, 2015; Sarah Besky, The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India, Oakland, University California Press, 2013.
48 Anne Meneley, “Blood, Sweat and Tears in a Bottle of Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil”, Food, Culture & Society, vol. 14, no 2, 2011, p. 275–292, DOI: 10.2752/175174411X12893984828872. Sarah Bowen, Divided Spirits, op. cit.
49 There is no industrial production within Lechkhumi. Many industrial wineries producing Tvishi Tsoikouri outside Lechkhumi receive hefty subsidies from the state and are intimately connected to the Dream often through personal donations from the owners to the party. Transparency International, “How Georgian Dream’s Winemaker Donors Benefit from the State Budget”, September 18, 2024. Online: https://transparency.ge/en/blog/how-georgian-dreams-winemaker-donors-benefit-state-budget.
50 Marina Kaganova et al., “Rioni Unchained”, online cite, 6:59.
51 Natural Wine Association. Online: https://nwa.ge/en/about.
52 Marina Kaganova et al., “Rioni Unchained”, online cite, 15:17 to 17:52.
53 In Georgian, the Soviets are often referred to as the Communists (k’omunist’ebi).
54 Guntra A. Aistara, Organic Sovereignties: Struggles over Farming in an Age of Free Trade, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2018.
55 Neringa Klumbytė, “The Soviet Sausage Renaissance”, American Anthropologist, vol. 112, no 1, 2010, p. 22-37.
56 Elizabeth Barham, “Translating Terroir: The Global Challenge of French AOC Labelling”, Journal of Rural Studies, vol. 19, no 1, 2003, p. 127-138, DOI: 10.1016/S0743-0167(02)00052-9.
57 Anne Meneley, “Blood, Sweat and Tears in a Bottle of Palestinian Extra-Virigin Olive Oil”, art. cit.
58 Heather Paxson, The Life of Cheese, op cit.
59 The state has not supported the development of small wineries in Lechkhumi, nor does it generally offer strong support in other regions. More recently, the National Tourism Association provided a trip for Tbilisi tastemakers to encourage the marketing of Lechkhumi wines; however, this grant did not support infrastructure development. Some funding has been received from international NGOs, mainly for short-term projects.
60 Robert C. Ulin, “Cooperation or Cooptation: A Southwest French Wine Cooperative”, Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 13, 1988, p. 253-267, DOI: 10.1007/BF00253919.
61 Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape”, art. cit.
62 Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War, op. cit., p. 10.
Haut de pageTable des illustrations
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| Titre | Ill. 1. Map of the Lechkhumi Region. |
| Crédits | Made by authors on Google Earth. |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/docannexe/image/1116/img-1.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 979k |
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| Titre | Ill. 2. Lechkhumi Vineyards. These vineyards face the Rioni River. |
| Crédits | Photograph by authors. |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/docannexe/image/1116/img-2.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 1,3M |
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| Titre | Ill. 3. Tvishi Wine Factory. Founded in the 1960s and closed in the 1990s. |
| Crédits | Photo by authors. |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/docannexe/image/1116/img-3.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 1,3M |
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| Titre | Ill. 4. The Tvishi Protected Designation of Origin Region, shown in lilac. |
| Légende | This official map includes only two villages: Tvishi and Alpana (ალპანა), northeast of Tvishi. Georgian National Wine Agency Website. https://wine.gov.ge/En/Files/Download/15337. |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/docannexe/image/1116/img-4.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 1,0M |
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| Titre | Ill. 5. Tvishi Tsolikouri labels from industrial wineries. |
| Légende | Label on left includes “Appellation of Origin” at the bottom right. Right label depicts the Khvamli massif at the top. |
| Crédits | Photographs by authors. |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/docannexe/image/1116/img-5.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 631k |
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| Titre | Ill. 6. The 2023 Lechkhumi Wine Festival held on the bank of the Rioni. |
| Légende | Khvamli is in the background; the vineyards are hidden by foliage. |
| Crédits | Photograph by authors. |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/docannexe/image/1116/img-6.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 1007k |
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Rikki Brown et Nick Baigent, « Resisting Development through Heritage: Identities, Hydropower, and Wine in Lechkhumi, Georgia », Sociétés & représentations, 60 | -0001, 95-116.
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Rikki Brown et Nick Baigent, « Resisting Development through Heritage: Identities, Hydropower, and Wine in Lechkhumi, Georgia », Sociétés & représentations [En ligne], 60 | 2025, mis en ligne le 17 décembre 2025, consulté le 10 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/socrep/1116 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15dha
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