Georgia’s National Wine Agency carried out quality control inspections at 86 wine companies in the second quarter of 2026, according to a report from the agency. The agency says the total number of violations declined compared to the same period last year. That headline figure sits on top of a much more uneven picture buried in the agency’s own breakdown.
The Q2 2026 report runs through five separate inspection tracks, each with its own scope, its own sample size, and its own violation count. Three of those tracks recorded single-digit violations against sample sets numbering in the dozens or hundreds. One track, the agency’s internal market controls, returned 14 violations from 34 samples drawn at 16 companies. A fifth track, the organoleptic tasting panels, evaluated 3,301 samples and failed 121 of them.
Five Inspection Tracks Run in Parallel
The five tracks the agency ran in Q2 2026 are not variations on a single check. Production-lot matching compares samples submitted for certification against the actual production lot. State supervision checks whether wineries comply with Georgian wine production regulations. Internal market controls visit facilities to sample products already inside Georgia’s distribution. Customs clearance inspection happens inside the customs clearance economic zone and is run by international contractors rather than agency staff. Organoleptic, or sensory, tastings evaluate wine by taste, smell, and visual character rather than chemical analysis alone.
Across those tracks, the agency inspected 86 wine companies in total during the quarter. That figure sits at the top of the report and frames the result as broad-based. Each individual track, however, drew from a different subset of those companies and tested a different number of samples. The numbers per track therefore carry more weight than the company-count headline when it comes to where the agency found problems.
The production-lot checks ran at 24 of those 86 companies, taking 177 samples and finding 8 violations across 3 companies. State supervision visited 1 company, took 4 samples, and found no violations. Internal market controls visited 23 facilities, drew 34 samples from 16 companies, and flagged 14 samples from 10 companies as violations. Customs clearance inspection, run by Bureau Veritas and SGS, covered 45 companies, drew 127 samples, and found 3 violations involving 3 companies. The sensory panels ran 68 tasting sessions and evaluated 3,301 samples, recording 3,180 positive assessments and 121 failures. The five tracks together cover different parts of the production chain and sample at very different rates.
| Inspection track | Coverage in Q2 2026 | Samples tested | Violations or failures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production-lot matching | 61 inspections at 24 companies | 177 | 8 violations across 3 companies |
| State supervision | 4 inspections at 1 company | 4 | 0 |
| Internal market controls | 23 facilities, samples from 16 companies | 34 | 14 violations across 10 companies |
| Customs clearance (Bureau Veritas, SGS) | 45 companies | 127 | 3 violations across 3 companies |
| Organoleptic tastings | 68 tasting sessions | 3,301 | 121 failures |
Where Violations Actually Concentrated
Internal market controls returned the heaviest concentration of violations per sample taken in the Q2 2026 report. Of the 34 samples drawn from 16 companies in that track, 14 samples from 10 companies were flagged as violations. By contrast, the customs clearance track found 3 violations across 127 samples, and the production-lot track found 8 across 177. The state supervision track took only 4 samples and found none. The sensory panels processed 3,301 samples and recorded 121 failures, a much smaller share of their total workload.
The internal market track also targets a different part of the supply chain. Customs clearance and production-lot checks sample wine moving through formal channels, while internal market controls target product already on shelves and in distribution inside Georgia. Violations found in that track therefore reach consumers before being caught, while customs clearance violations are caught before export. The agency’s Q2 2026 report does not break out what kind of violations the 14 internal market samples represented.
International Auditors in the Customs Zone
The customs clearance inspections in the Q2 2026 report were carried out by Bureau Veritas and SGS, two international auditing firms contracted by the National Wine Agency under the customs zone audit arrangement. Bureau Veritas is headquartered in France and SGS in Switzerland, and both operate as independent third-party auditors across many industries. In the Georgian wine sector, their role is to verify certified export lots inside the customs clearance economic zone. The Q2 2026 report is the most recent public snapshot of their work in that role, and it does not separate the two firms’ results.
Their Q2 2026 numbers sit inside the broader five-track report. The two firms together inspected 45 companies, drew 127 samples, and identified 3 violations involving 3 companies. That is a low violation count relative to sample size and a much lower concentration than the internal market track returned in the same quarter. The volume they covered in Q2 was the largest by company count of any track.
Their involvement is a structural arrangement rather than a one-off contract. Under a cooperation agreement with the agency, Bureau Veritas and SGS carry out inspections of certified export wine in the customs clearance zone, separate from the certification process itself. The arrangement came from the private wine sector and aims to ensure greater transparency in export quality.
The structural logic is that an independent auditor inside the customs zone checks what was already certified. The agency still issues the original certificate of conformity for export products under the Law of Georgia on Vine and Wine, confirming that the identified products comply with Georgian legislation. The international firms then verify that what actually ships matches what was certified. Under the agency’s rules for certification of alcoholic beverages and grape-based spirits, the agency retains the right to inspect at any stage, including after certification. The two-auditor setup adds a layer the agency itself used to run directly.
A Quarter Earlier, the Numbers Were Different
Q1 2026, the quarter immediately before the Q2 report, ran a different shape across the same inspection tracks, according to the Q1 2026 inspection summary. Production-lot checks in Q1 covered 23 companies and drew 216 samples, finding no violations, against the Q2 figure of 8 violations from 177 samples at 24 companies. State supervision in Q1 inspected 4 companies and took 5 samples, also with no violations, compared with Q2’s clean 4-from-4 result. Customs clearance in Q1 covered 22 companies, drew 51 samples, and found 6 violations at 3 companies, against Q2’s 3 violations in 127 samples at 45 companies.
The internal market track showed the sharpest quarter-on-quarter shift in violation counts. In Q1 2026, the agency ran 6 inspections, drew 101 samples from 56 companies, and identified 49 violations involving 33 companies. In Q2 2026, internal market controls visited 23 facilities, drew 34 samples from 16 companies, and flagged 14 samples from 10 companies. The Q1 internal market sample base was roughly three times larger than the Q2 base, and the violation count fell accordingly. The agency’s framing, that violations declined compared to the same period last year, is anchored to a year-over-year comparison rather than a quarter-over-quarter drop.
| Inspection track | Q1 2026 samples | Q1 2026 violations | Q2 2026 samples | Q2 2026 violations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Production-lot matching | 216 | 0 | 177 | 8 |
| State supervision | 5 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Internal market controls | 101 (from 56 companies) | 49 (across 33 companies) | 34 (from 16 companies) | 14 (across 10 companies) |
| Customs clearance | 51 (at 22 companies) | 6 (across 3 companies) | 127 (at 45 companies) | 3 (across 3 companies) |
Sensory Panels Tested 3,301 Samples
The largest track by sample volume in Q2 2026 was not a chemical or paperwork check. It was the sensory panel. The agency held 68 organoleptic tastings of alcoholic beverages during the quarter, evaluating a total of 3,301 samples.
- Color and clarity
- Typicity
- Presence of wine diseases
- Aroma
- Taste
- Overall harmony
Those checks together are what a trained taster does that a lab machine cannot replicate. The Q2 2026 sensory panels recorded 3,180 positive assessments and 121 failures. Those failures reflect what human assessors identified as off-spec wine during the quarter. The agency’s Q2 report does not separate the 121 sensory failures by company.
Sensory tasting has been a fixture of the agency’s work for years. In the first six months of 2025, the agency’s export-oriented tasting sessions ran 132 events and evaluated 6,208 samples, with 6,006 positive assessments and 202 negative evaluations, per the agency’s official six-month 2025 statistics. The Q2 2026 sensory panel volume of 3,301 samples across 68 sessions is consistent with that historical scale.
- 68 organoleptic tastings held in Q2 2026
- 3,301 samples evaluated by sensory panels
- 3,180 samples received positive assessments
- 121 samples failed the sensory test
- 6,208 samples were evaluated in H1 2025 against 3,301 in Q2 2026
