To Georgia, religion, wine and beyond

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In Georgia, you can’t help but feel that each breath you take contains a slice of history.

Tblisi, its capital city, is peppered with historical monuments and woven into that fabric is wine.

Even as you walk down the streets, the walls and metal work on buildings all display some aspect of the vine – be it grapes, leaves or shoots.

As you get out into the wine country, even more of that history is coming through. At the monastery wineries, the cellars are sometimes century old while the wine making method spans the millenia.

Qvevri. That’s the buried, pointy clay amphorae that wine is fermented and stored in. A method that dates back thousands of years and one which remains prominent today.

What is there to see? Plenty if you want to learn about wine’s history in a global context.

The landscape is a rustic one, filled with farming and small scale agriculture. The food even more rustic still but always following the traditional setting of salads followed by grilled meats. The wine has great potential and it certainly makes a very interesting proposition.

What really brings it all together is when the Tamada raises a toast at the dinner table to religion, to health, to wine.

Read my thoughts on Georgian wine

Find out about the Georgian supra