California wine producers frustrated with government-supported competition from Australian, Chile and other wine producing nations may find another competitors in the stores soon — a competitor encouraged by the U.S. government.

In an attempt to help the small democratic Republic of Georgia, the U.S. government has been helping its agricultural producers deal with a devastating Russian boycott.

Wine is important in the Connecticut-size country’s economy — before the embargo, it produced more than 7 million cases per year and most was exported. Russia was the country’s largest customer for its wines, but stopped buying them last year, supposedly because of quality problems, but really because of the pro-Western attitude of the Caucasian country. The Russians are also supporting two separatist movements in the small country.

Georgia, which the local population calls Sakartvelo, is a democratic, Christian country surrounded by Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia. The Georgians have a unique language and alphabet that are millennia old. Although they once had to learn Russian, they’ve taken down almost all the signs in that language since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The boycott may be especially frustrating to a number of foreign companies, especially Italian ones, that invested in modern new plants to serve the anticipated Russian demand, including refrigerated tanks and filtration equipment to produce the sweet wines popular in Russia.  

Recognizing that 45 to 50 percent of the 4.5-million population works in agriculture, including wine grapes, Georgia’s popular and pro-Western young government — it only achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 — has instituted number of steps to recover. The U.S. government is helping, too. Through USAID, it has funded many programs to identiFy, improve and market agricultural products.

The country’s minister of agriculture is 33-year-old skier Peter Tsiskarishvili who attended high school in Colorado and college in Minneapolis. He said, “The Russians wanted low-priced wine and they didn’t care about quality. The West wants better quality but of course we also have to be price competitive as well. Some Georgia companies are doing this well.”

For now, Georgia’s biggest wine markets are the former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, the Baltic States and Kazakhstan, along with other  Eastern European countries, but Georgia’s sights are clearly on the United States. “The U.S. has the greatest prospects for Georgian wines of any country except Ukraine,”  Tsiskarishvili noted. “Some single cities in the U.S. are bigger prospects than some whole countries.”

He said that though there are small pockets of Georgians and Georgian-Americans in the U.S., many former Soviet citizens are fans of Georgian wines, and obviously they will be targets. Still, he said, “We must develop the whole market.”

The U.S. wine market is soon to be the world’s largest, but of course, every other wine-producing country in the world has targeted the U.S. market. Nevertheless, a number of U.S. wine buyers at the same meeting later confirmed that they saw a role for Georgian wines.

Keith Johnson, the director of sales and marketing for Exclusive Brand Imports in Redmond, Wash., said, “We see a role for a red and white at about $8.99. That price shows some respect — it’s not Two-Buck Chuck — and yet it’s low enough to inspire some trials by curious customers.”

Vinifera grapes originated in the Caucacus region, and Georgia has more than 400 varieties. It would be very easy to overwhelm and confuse most customers with too many.

Johnson suggested the varietal white rkatsiteli (you can ignore the ‘r’ safely) and red saperavi as the best candidates. “Rkatsiteli could be a new pinot grigio,” exclaimed Erez Klein, wine specialist for Whole Foods in Seattle. He thinks that saperavi could become a hot new wine like Argentine malbec.

He believes, however, that many of the big wineries are overusing technology — especially filtering — and destroying some of the wine’s character and appeal.

A number of large joint ventures have been built to make the wine. They include very modern Badagoni, Kindzmaraulkis Mariani, Mildiani, and slightly older Teliani Valley, and they’re full of the latest Italian wine-making technology, but Klein and Johnson think the country’s winemakers need to spend some time tasting the wines they will compete against. “They don’t yet understand what Americans and others want,” said Klein.

At visits to the wineries, we rarely saw even competitive Georgian wines, much less those from Chile, Argentina and Australia, the real competition in America right now.

The wines tasted good especially well with food, and the Georgians are legendary for their hospitality, showering visitors with selections at banquets called “supras.”

Interestingly, Klein also sees a market for some of the country’s unique kvevri wines, which are made they way they have been made for thousands of years, in giant underground amphorae. Produced by artisanal producers using ancient techniques, “these wines appeal to serious wine geeks,” said Klein.

In additional news, Georgia is adding holographic seals to each bottle exported to ensure integrity; it has been burned by counterfeit wines in the New York area, and a least one large Georgia winery shipped substandard wines in the past.