(NPR) - When I ask Iago Batarshvili to climb into his qvevri, a Georgian clay wine barrel, he rolls his eyes before he drops a ladder into what looks like a hole in the ground and makes his way down. What is a novelty to an observer is, to Batarshvili, simply the way things are done.

"I don't make anything special," he says. "I only continue in the way started by my parents."

Georgia's winemaking heritage goes back 8,000 years and centers on the qvevri, a cavernous terra-cotta pot shaped like an egg, lined with beeswax and buried to the mouth underground. But these ancient vessels were sidelined by the industrial wine production dictated by seven decades of Soviet rule. Over the last 10 years, however, qvevri wine has slowly recovered. Today, it is a calling card for Georgian wine around the world.

Batarshvili says making white wine in qvevris imparts a unique flavor. He pours organic white Chinuri grapes, skins and stems into the qvevri in October each year, lets them ferment with natural yeast for two weeks, and then seals the qvevris and leaves them buried underground for six months before lifting the lids in April. Finally, Batarshvili transfers the wine to a smaller set of qvevris for a further half year of aging before bottling. There are no barrels, tanks or gauges — just the grapes and the qvevri.

In most commercial winemaking, only red wines are fermented with their skins. The extended skin contact gives Batarshvili's white qvevri wine an orange tint and a deep tannin flavor that is prized by customers in Japan, Europe and the United States. Red qvevri wine is made through the same process.

Batarshvili uses the same methods and even the same primitive wooden tools his parents and grandparents used, but for his forebears, qvevri wine was only a home craft.

That home craft was uprooted — literally — when the Soviets invaded Georgia in 1921. The Bolsheviks ripped up the hundreds of grape varieties grown on Georgia's many family vineyards. Instead, the Communists planted just a handful of grapes varietals and nationalized viniculture, churning out some 200 million liters of mediocre, mass-produced wine a year.

Ironically, the Russians who dismissed qvevri wine were also instrumental in restoring it. In 2006, the Georgian wine industry, already contracted after the fall of the Soviet Union, faced a grave threat when Vladimir Putin banned exports to Russia. Putin claimed it was to avoid rampant health violations in the Georgian wine industry; Georgians saw the move as punishment for drawing too close to the West.