Georgia is fast earning its adventure travel stripes, with world-class hiking and off-piste skiing in the Greater Caucasus mountains. However, it's the country's vineyards and kitchens that are really stealing the show with their local wines and field-to-fork cuisine.
Sighnaghi’s eighth-century Bodbe Monastery
Credit: Maksim Ozerov
Crossing himself after the earthenware qvevri is unsealed, winemaker Gia Gamtkitsulashvili ladles the fresh rkatsiteli wine into a pitcher to a round of applause from an expectant gathering. His qvevri wine is amber, like sap that has frozen in aspic, from vineyards flourishing in the sun-kissed valleys between the snowy Caucasus Mountains.
“I’m happy,” he says. “It’s been in the qvevri for six months, the acidity is balanced, the colour is light. This is how the oldest wine in the world looks.” If one word finagles its way into the lexis of travel this summer, it might be “qvevri”. These lemon-shaped clay vessels have been used to ferment Georgian wines since the sixth millennia BC – and if Covid-19 continues to disrupt major wine tourism destinations such as France, Georgia is waiting in the wings, well-placed after becoming one of the first countries to accept fully vaccinated passengers, wi