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.
Winemaking in Georgia dates back more than 8,000 years and remains an important part of the country’s culture.Qvevri, traditional clay winemaking vessels that are buried in the ground, are still used today at many Georgian wineries.is an independent winery that traces its origins back to 1894, when its first qvevri were placed in the ground.
In the small city of Ambrolauri, around 150 miles north west of Tbilisi in the mountainous Racha region, a giant wine bottle statue towering over the main intersection is your first hint of the drink’s importance to this part of the country. Its label reads ‘Khvanchkara’, the region’s syrupy-sweet, darkly-coloured red wine made from aleksandrouli and mujuretuli grapes. Stalin confiscated the wine from its original creators, the noble Kipiani family, in order to manufacture it en masse.
Meanwhile, keeping with the literary theme, the west Georgian city of Kutaisi was recently named as a UNESCO Creative City of Literature and was once the stomping ground for some of the country’s most influential composers, playwrights and poets. There, you’ll find the restaurant, which evokes the intimacy of a 20th-century writers’ salon.