On our way East today, 100 miles or so from Gori to Telavi: looks straightforward on the map and includes a stop at a winery: the area around Telavi is a prime wine producing area for the burgeoning Georgian wine trade!

Here’s a few pics of the scenery along the way:

The second pic is a church ‘steeple’ i spotted from the moving bus: might have been done simply to save money, but i thought it looked rather elegant. As we moved further west towards the foothills of the Caucasus it got steadily more mountainous.

We were introduced to a rather posh looking ‘wine stop’ along the way: certainly the prices struck me as a bit scary, expecally as Georgian wine is generally pretty inexpenisve!

Here’s a few more shots of the wine shop……

I seem to remember the one on the bottom right is a display of Georgian Honey of which they sell a great deal…… Some of the booze you can see is a Georgian fire water called Chacha [i kid you not!] 53% proof: we sampled it later at the winery!

Next stop was indeed the winery where we were given a tour and lunch…. I’ve done that before in South Africa – it was very stylish and enjoyable there al fresco in the sunshinre and Georgia compared very well indeed!!!

Our guide was a mid 30s chap [in the yellow shirt below] who had left his village to become a well paid IT expert in Tbilisi. Five or so years ago, he returned to the village and took over running the family winery. He was very smooth…… you can see our gang look like desciples paying attention to the Master!

Here are a few pics, including some of the kit employed. Anybody know what that red thing is for? He probably told us, but of course i couldn’t hear…….

The first pic is where is all starts: the Vines! Pretty much all the vines grown in Georgia are local varieties and they have hundreds of them – none of your mass produced Merlot or Shiraz for the Georgians. They also have a traditional way of making the wine, different from the rest of Europe, called: ‘Qvevri’. This process is practised throughout Georgia, particularly in village communities where unique varieties of grapes are grown. The Qvevri is an egg-shaped earthenware vessel used for making, ageing and storing the wine. Knowledge and experience of Qvevri manufacture and wine-making are passed down by families, neighbours, friends and relatives, all of whom join in communal harvesting and wine-making activities. The wine-making process involves pressing the grapes and then pouring the juice, grape skins, stalks and pips into the Qvevri, which is sealed and buried in the ground so that the wine can ferment for five to six months before being drunk. Most European wine is made simply by extracting the juice from the wines before fermenting. The Qvevri process produces a wine typically more robust than the standard European method and i thought it was great! If Georgian wine is made using this process it will typically have ‘Qvevri’ on the label.

Recently Georgian winemakers have started to produce wines made in the more general European way, simply to exploit that market – not everybody likes their wine robust!

And so to lunch

The final four pics are of the wine we tasted. The first is an light amber coloured number, prefect for lunch, the second is the robust Qvevri red and the final two are both Chacha: the first is distilled from the Qvevri wine and the second is peach based. We did swallow the wine, but it was ‘tasting’ measures only! Just as well with the Chacha which quite literally takes your breath away!!!

The food was a typical Caucasian spread: salad with lettuce, tomatoes, two or three different types of cheese and yoghurt, all accompanied with huge chunks of freshly cooked local bread. And that’s just for starters!! Probably get some chicken or mushroom soup to follow, then the ‘main’ course usually chicken or lamb cooked in a light sauce, but accompanied by still more bread. Usually fresh fruit for desert…..

Here are some more people pics, probably i haven’t provided enough of those!?

First our Georgian bus driver and Ethiopian-Itlaian Tour Leader Dario, then our Teacher proudly holding the product and finally our thespian Georgian Tour Guide.

Telavi

With the benefit of hindsight we clearly did not spend enough time in Telavi to do it justice: it has an interesting and complex history – like many of the parts of the South Caucasus we have already seen, it has had numerous rulers over the centuries and Telavi can trace its origins right back to the Bronze Age.

Telavi began first became a large and fairly important political and administrative centre in the 8th century. Its most recent period of political importance was in the 17th century when it became capital of the kingdom of Kekheti and by 1762, it had turned into the second capital (after Tbilisi) of the united Eastern Georgian Kingdom of Kartl-Kakheti. King Erekle 2nd who you have heard a little about here in previous posts was born and died in Telavi. His reign was a special epoch in the history of the city.

Pretty much any time you lift your head in Telavi you see mountains, either the local variety or the High Caucasus Mountains which go to over 16,000.

Here are some of the older Telavi buildings and some images of the walls and fortifications…

And speaking of unusal vehicles, none of us had ever seen such a wide range of tour vehicles as we saw in Telavi – they come either with a tour/driver or self drive. I only had the presence of mind to take a pic of this one……

Tomorrow we head off to the third country in our schedule: Azerbaijan…. some resourcefulness had to be employed in getting us into the country given the border had been closed on the Azerbaijan side!

More about that in the next post……