When I told my friends I was headed on a wine trip to Georgia, they were shocked, or, alternatively confused if they thought I meant the deep south. A fellow blogger wondered how I had been selected for this trip, where I would travel in the rarefied company of four Masters of Wine (only 300 have achieved this designation). As I looked over the illustrious participants, I began to wonder the same.
The trip was sponsored by the USAID Economic Prosperity Initiative. USAID supports economic development in struggling countries as a practical way to encourage peace and stability around the world. Georgia, which has suffered greatly at the hands of our former enemy, the Soviet Union, seemed like a good place to prop up, bordered as it is by the middle east to the south and Russia to the north. 
The trip is being run by Jim Krigbaum, a cheerful, whip smart entrepreneur, who runs 2020 Development Company. Whether he's checking out mangoes in Pakistan or wine in Georgia, Jim knows all the ins and outs of getting the right products to the right markets. 

Frank Cornelissen – Etna's Individualist

After learning the commercial wine business as an agent/broker in his native Belgium, ten years ago Frank Cornelissen followed his dream to the north slope of Sicily's Mt. Etna where he established a vineyard and winery. Beginning modestly with only a 0.5 hectare vineyard, today he produces 20,000 bottles a year from 12 hectares in several separate vineyards that he owns.

Frank is a true believer in the purity of natural winemaking, avoiding all external chemical or other outside treatment in his USDA organic vineyards. A measure of his success is that all of his wine for next year as well as the previous one is already sold.

When I visited Frank and toured his vineyards and winery, I asked him why he chose Sicily for his operations. He quickly corrected me by saying that he chose Etna, not Sicily. The soil found on the slopes of Mt. Etna, an active volcano, has a rich volcanic soil different from that found in the rest of Sicily. Frank's vineyards are on the north slope of Mt. Etna which in recent years has been spared the majority of the volcano's eruptions. Frank adds nothing to his artisan wines, preferring the "naturalness" of the grapes to show. Another believer in the use of terracotta amphora, he ages his wine in sealed, epoxy lined amphorae that are cleaned with alcohol after each use. These amphorae are buried in lavas rocks for both the prevention of contamination and protection from earthquakes.