Evangeline - Ancient wine techniques in a modern wine world.
Mysterious.
Ethereal.
Multi-Layered.
Elusive.
Most visits to a modern winery will have you looking up. In Georgia, your eyes are often drawn down, to what is brewing in traditional clay pots (Qvervi) buried in the earth,.
This is the wine we love making most at Blind Corner in the Margaret River Region, Western Australia. You never know what it's going to be like until we open the lid after three months of the grapes sleeping peacefully underground.
Evangeline is only released the years when everything is perfect.
Once the grapes disappear into clay, there's nowhere to hide. There are no second chances with this wine. Just fruit, skins, stems, time and trust.
And a couple of giant buried clay eggs from Georgia.
The day the Qvervi arrived.
About eight years ago we imported two traditional Georgian Qvervi -300 litre and 270 litre vessels - through a small Georgian wine importer (and our man on the ground in Sydney at the time)
These weren't decorative garden pots for a trendy courtyard. These were the real ancient wine thing.
We originally used Chenin Blanc and also played with Pinot Grigio and Aligote. Though in recent years we've experimented with Cabernet Sauvignon as well. The fruit is hand picked, gently foot crushed, then transferred directly into the qvervi with skins and solids intact.
Then we seal them closed.
And wait.
For around three months the wine quietly steeps underground, fermenting naturally and slowly finding its shape. The first vintage was wild and intense - exciting, slightly terrifying and probably exactly what experimental wine-making should feel like. Every year since, we've made tiny adjustments. Small shifts in maceration, extraction and timing. Learning how the clay speaks.
The 2023 release felt like the clearest expression yet. Not polished. Not perfected. Just deeply resolved. And to those harsh critics of Zero additives and Natural Wine- Evangeline tastes better on day 2 and day 3 after being opened.
We are excited to unveil the 2026.
Clay Doesn't Lie.
Qvervi wines exist in a category all of their own.
The texture is different. The tannin profile is different. There's often a savoury edge, sometimes a tea like grip, layers of - dried herbs, ripe peach skins, smooth smokey whisky, spice and something almost impossible to describe except as alive. Porous and buried clay vessels in a Sheoak and Marri forest don't really have a precedent I guess.
These wines grow in the vineyard long before the winery enters the picture. Every stage must be clean and intentional because we bottle Evangeline without added yeasts, fining or filtration. We watch moon phases to settle the wine naturally, allowing gravity and time to do the work modern wineries often outsource to machinery.
Sometimes the wine rewards us.
Sometimes it humbles us.
There are no guarantees with this style of wine-making, and honestly, that's part of the attraction. We get one shot each year. If the wine isn't right. it doesn't get bottled. Simple as that.
No safety net. No rescue mission.
Wines for the Table, Not the trophy cabinet.
Evangeline was never created to win medals or sit under fluorescent lights at wine shows. It belongs at the table with proper food, loud conversation and people who don't mind a wine asking a few questions back.
The Qvervi's are handmade in the Imereti region of Georgia by master qvervi maker Zaliko Bodjadze and Paata Kapanadze, whose vessels are used by some of the finest traditional producers in Georgia, as well as experimental winemakers across France and Italy.
The clay from Imereti is prized for its purity - dense, mineral rich and remarkably free from stones or impurities. You can feel the difference in the surface texture alone.
Each qvervi is lined not with resin or industrial sealants, but impregnated with organic beeswax, exactly as they have been for thousands of years.
And when we say thousands, we mean it.
Georgia: The cradle of Wine.
Georgia- the country, not the peach and golf state- is widely recognised as the oldest continuously documented wine culture on earth. Archaeological evidence dates wine-making there back over 8000 years.
Eight. Thousand. Years.
We haven't been there. Yet.
Long before stainless steel tanks, cultured yeasts, reverse osmosis, additives, gold medals and tasting panels were shifting how wine is made, Georgian families were growing and fermenting grapes underground in clay vessels buried to their necks in the earth.
Whole bunches, skins, juice and sometimes stems are placed into egg-shaped clay vessels, sealed with lids and beeswax, then left underground through the changing seasons. The earth regulates temperature naturally. The wine settles itself. Fermentation becomes less an industrial process and more a slow natural conversation between clay, fruit and time.
Georgia is also the spiritual birthplace of skin contact whites- what the modern wine world now calls "orange wine", usually while charging twenty bucks extra and playing obscure jazz.
For us, Evangeline was never about chasing trends. It was about reconnecting wine to something older and more human- nature.
The Blind Corner Way.
At Blind Corner, Evangeline starts in the vineyard.
The farming has to be just right. Organic. Biodynamic. Healthy Soils. Balanced vines. Clean fruit carrying its own natural energy into the qvervi. You can't fake your way into qvervi winemaking. The vessel amplifies everything - the beauty and the flaws.
These wines are seasonal in the truest sense. Fleeting. Variable. Honest. Each vintage carries the fingerprint of the growing season more than the hand of the winemaker.
That's what makes them special to us.
Less manipulation. More observation.
Less manufacturing. More farming.
The clay simply tells the truth louder than stainless steel or Oak ever could.
“Qvevri wine asks for the oldest thing modern life struggles to give: patience.”
Lets raise a glass and toast to Georgia-
“May your vineyard be wide as your heart,
your qvevri deep as your wisdom,
and your wine never drunk alone.”
Cheers
Thanks for reading.
To find out more about us at Blind Corner - click here
