Georgia – the country not the state – now has validation to their world's oldest wine region claim.

Proof was discovered just 30 miles south of Tbilisi. Carbon dating excavated pottery jars containing wine traces linked to 5980BC left the previous oldest, Iran, in the dust by about 1000 years. But in a world where people race to be the biggest, the best, or the oldest, I thought Georgia already had something far superior. Tenacity.

When the news broke I was in Los Angeles at RAW, a natural wine fair. Coincidentally, I was with Georgians, Archil Guniava and his winemaking, college-aged daughter Nino. We were drinking his white wine made from the Krakuna grape. Most probably it was made the way that ancient wine had been: foot-stomped into a hollowed-out log, flowed into a buried kvevri – a large clay fermentation vessel. The wine stayed on its skins for eight months until bottled. Its taste was precise, a little scratchy and full of life.