Do Re Mi Ojaleshi
Have you ever had a bottle of wine that you know you should be drinking but you never seem to be in the right mood for it? You don’t not want to drink it. But you just never grab it. For me, that’s been the Do-Re-Mi Ojaleshi. I finally managed to open it.
I bought this in Georgia…three years ago? More? I have a wine hoarding issue and, knowing this, I recently just made myself open it.
Do Re Mi
In 2012 a small group of wine loving friends got together and founded Do Re Mi winery. Their mission: create organic wines using the traditional Georgian techniques. The grapes are organic and wines, often fermented and aged in qvevri, contain no added sulfides. Located just 25 kilometers outside of Tbilisi in the Kartli region, the winery sources grapes from both Kartli and Kakheti.
Saperavi, Rkatsiteli, and Mtsvane grapes are commonly used in Georgia, including by Do Re Mi. One sees Ojaleshi, on the other hand, less often and usually in semi-sweet or off-dry wines. However, Do Re Mi uses this grape for dry red wine. 
Ojaleshi is a dark-skinned grape variety that hails from the area surrounding the Tskhenis-Tskali River in northwest Georgia. It has a large amount of anthocyanins giving its wines a great depth of color. Despite that, wines tend to be more light-bodied in structure with lower tannins. In Georgian, Ojaleshi means “grows on trees” which refers to the way it was once grown in trees.
Do Re Mi Ojaleshi, 2015
Fermented and aged in qvevri, the wine did indeed have the promised deep, opaque color. I did not find this especially expressive in the nose. It smelled much like the clay in which it was aged along with some woody/damp forest notes. Rough tannins greeted me on the palate along with those green wood and clay flavors. Some red fruit was evident but it was the black pepper that stole the show here.
Sadly, I think I left this one too long. There was still some life in it but I remember Do Re Mi’s Ojaleshi being much fresher.
Flavor-wise (if not texturally) it reminded me a great deal of Adakarası. We know that Turkey and Greece definitely share a few grapes (Foça Karası/Fokiano and Çalkarası/Liatiko) so it seems pretty logical that Turkey and Georgia may share some as well. They share a boarder and lot of winemaking history after all.