Georgia has over 525 indigenous grape varieties, which is roughly 1/6th of the world’s total grape species. Approximately 40 varieties are officially grown for commercial viticulture production. While Georgian wine has been known locally for centuries, its global consumption is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Georgia lies in the oldest wine-producing region in the world, with Georgian viticulture tracing back to over 8,000 years of grape cultivation and winemaking. While excavating a Neolithic village just 50 kilometres south of Tbilisi in the south-eastern region called Kvemo Kartli, archaeologists found prehistoric winemaking artefacts, specifically, clay vessel pieces containing residues of the world's oldest wine dating back to the 6th millennium BC.

Writers and artists have long been attracted to the strange and romantic landscape of Badacsony, with its sharp volcanic hills overlooking smooth Lake Balaton. Stories about the wines from vineyards around Lake Balaton in west central Hungary go back over 2,000 years.

The fourteenth-century Hungarian King Charles Robert once travelled to Veszprém on the north shore of Lake Balaton to visit a bishop. Before dinner, the king noticed a gigantic cup in the monastery treasury. “The monks used to drink from it long ago,” the bishop told him. As they sat down to eat, the king asked that the cup be placed at their table. The bishop announced that none of the canons at the table could possibly drain the massive tankard, with the possible exception of the formidable Father Eusebius. The king challenged Eusebius to take the cup and uphold the honour of the house, but the father declined and held his ground despite the needling and beseeching of the assemblage.