Georgia on my mind

Wine is not just a drink in Georgia, it is synonymous with the national identity, writes HOLLY HUNT

A STURDY LADY, tattered sleeves rolled high, hands on the hips of her long black skirt, surveys me cautiously across the counter. After much gesticulating, a dusty plastic bottle filled with dark red liquid appears; wine from the former Soviet Union of Georgia.

A boy of no more than five hands me a chipped mug from behind his mother’s skirt. The liquid is sloshed into the mug and I take a sip. It’s cool, fruity and refreshing. I smile and nod. She smiles back delighted. A few empty Coke bottles are found and we decant the wine into them. Some haggling is done over the price and then she gives me a discount anyway and I’m sent on my way loaded down with real Georgian home-brew.

Wine is not just a drink in Georgia it is part of the national identity. It’s synonymous with the population’s generous hospitality, fierce patriotism and devoted religious beliefs. There is evidence to suggest that the first wine was crushed and drunk in Georgia over 8,000 years ago. Every home with a garden is shaded by a vine and each home produces its own brew. Before Christianity, couples were married in the sanctity of the wine cellar and the slave girl who brought Christianity to Georgia did so holding a cross made of vines. Everyone drinks wine and as a visitor I was expected to do likewise.

Our trip began in a spring-drenched landscape along the southern border with Armenia and Turkey. Swathes of poppies crowded each side of the road, along which we drove, stretching up in splashes of red to the peaks of the white capped Caucasus Mountains. Yellow butter cups, white daisies, purple sword lilies; each view seemed to get more riotous in colour.

“I was in Namaqualand for the flowering season once, it was nothing like this,” a fellow traveller exclaimed. Every time we stopped you could hear a cuckoo, or as the Georgian’s call them a guguli.

We passed shepherds on horseback herding flocks of cattle, goats and sheep up to new grass in the mountains. Alongside them enormous Caucasian sheepdogs kept the flock in check. In a ditch a group of griffin vultures tore at the carcass of one the dogs had overlooked.

By late evening we reached Akaltsikhe. Our host, Maria, served us straw-coloured sweet wine. Her husband took on the role of toast master and as course after course was served we raised our glasses to our hosts, to the Lord, to Georgia, to ourselves and anyone else we could think of.

A Georgian meal is a marathon of meze plates. The table is piled high with dishes infused with garlic, walnuts, nutmeg, cumin and coriander. Everyone sits around the table and helps themselves, like a family banquet. Hot breads stuffed with local cheeses ( khachapuri), aubergines with walnut paste, lamb and tarragon stew, shredded beetroot with peppers and pomegranate seeds, red beans with garlic and walnuts, dumplings stuffed with spicy mince meat (khinkhali); visiting Georgia will not help your waist line.

Following the brown raging torrent of the river Mtkvari’s melt-water, on its winding track through the mountains, we reached Gori. This is the home town of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili or, as he named himself, Stalin the “man of steel”.

Embarrassed by his humble beginnings, it was to his own home that Stalin’s horrendous policies of oppression were most fervently carried through.

Our guide in the Stalin museum told us of his life and victories. But then, solemnly brought us into a room where letters from dead Georgian soldiers were tacked to the wall. Stalin’s desk, where so many were tried for fabricated crimes, stood in a dim corner. But he wasn’t the first to tyrannise the country where Jason came in search of his Golden Fleece.

There is an air of guarded mourning in Georgia. Almost everyone wears black and the women carry blood red roses that speak of romantic tragedy. It is though, far from romantic, their tragedies are real, raw and recurrent. The Romans laid waste to this fertile country in the first century. They were followed by the Persians, Turks, the Mongols, Tartars, the Iranians and many others in between. The last bombs to fall on Georgia were dropped by Russian forces only three years ago, “7,000 people were killed” our guide Maia told me solemnly.

That afternoon I ran up to highest point I could find; a cross on a hill overlooking the town. Reaching the open ground I found graves; thousands of them. A few women in black, their headscarves tied tight, bent low pulling at weeds. At the top of the hill I noticed abandoned bunkers dug in the yellow soil. Below me two tanks lay rusting in the wild flowers.

To the north, past the rows of identical refugee houses, I could see the border with South Ossetia, the region caught in the most recent cross-fire. It is so very hard to get your head around the enormity of suffering this part of the world has endured.Who is to blame depends on who is telling the story.

Near the airport in the capital, Tbilisi, at the top of a column hundreds of feet high, stands a man holding a star. Maia explained with disgust that the monument was erected by the Russians so that Georgians would remember that for them the sun rises in the north, in Russia. One by one these monuments are being destroyed and as Maia proudly explained “it is now law for no Soviet icons in Georgia”.

From this battered history Georgian’s traditions, unique language and religious beliefs have been distilled and strengthened. There are awe-inspiring churches everywhere; 365 of them dedicated to their patron saint alone, who coincidently is also claimed as the English patron saint.

On my first day, my head covered by an obligatory scarf, I walked into the sixth century Sioni Church in Tiblisi. The air was heavy with the scent of incense and sweet beeswax candles that flickered in front of glass-covered icons. The chants of a polyphonic choir echoed from an adjacent alcove. From the dim lit corners came a thronging queue of people making their way towards a cross held by a priest in flowing red and gold embroidered gowns. One by one they kissed the cross and then filed on to the next icon; laying their foreheads against the glass of each, mumbling well rehearsed prayers. Ancient yet very living customs, so painstakingly interwoven with etiquette.

The frescoes in most of these churches were whitewashed by Russian troops during their occupation and the only evidence of their existence is in the high alcoves where the paint brushes couldn’t reach. There is, however, the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta. Akin to the Vatican for Catholics, this is the religious centre for the Georgian Orthodox Church. Buried in its foundations is a cloth from the robes of Jesus. The Georgian king’s private guard ensured its protection through the centuries and assisted now by Unesco World Heritage funding it stands today resplendent.

The north of Georgia is marked by a strip of snow-capped peaks, the high Caucasus Mountains. We drove up until the white splashes turned to muddy melting summer snow and the road to dirt. Kazbegi is a small mountain town close to the Russian border facing the dramatic majesty of the snow-covered Mount Kazbegi. The crisp air smells of wood-smoke and cow dung. Pigs lie asleep on the cobbled streets and the International Google Supermarket attempts to attract the few tourists to buy dusty bottles of vodka and melting chocolate.

We hiked from the town up to the Gergeti Trinity Church that balances on the tip of a mountain surrounded by jagged white peaks.

From the mountains we descended to the region most famous for its wine, Kakheti. The wide roads here are lined with tall poplars, vineyards stretching out behind them. There is an air of Provence and yet the road has all but a memory of Tarmac and the fields are worked by hand. Three boys swaggered by, broad-brimmed straw hats pushed back on their heads, wooden handled hoes balancing on their shoulders.

Each region in Georgia has its own dance, music, foods and wines. In Kakheti every town produces its own variety. The draught wine is stored in large clay vats, known as kevri, set into the floor and sealed with huge slabs of slate.

From his dimly lit wine cellar an old man, with a mouthful of gleaming gold teeth, explained to me with pride that even the word “wine” is derived from the Georgian word ghvino. Tastes can vary from cringingly acidic to Ribena-like fruit juice and, confusingly, the red wine is often the colour of yellow straw. On our final evening in Tbilisi the restaurant served us its most expensive red wine, the rich, fruity Kvanchkara: Georgia’s best and apparently Stalin’s favourite.

Over dinner Maia told me a tale: at the beginning of time,when God was divvying out land to the nations of the world, the Georgians were away drinking. Arriving late they explained to an angry God that they had been toasting His health, which had obviously taken up quite a lot of time. Pleased by their excuse, God gave them the only land he had left, the most beautiful land of all that he had set aside for himself.

Hence, Georgians have wine to thank for acquiring their beautiful country and what better way to honour that than by drinking it.

Go there

BMI flies from Dublin to Tbilisi via London Heathrow.

The author’s ground trip was managed by Wild Frontiers at wildfrontiers.co.uk.

Georgian wine is sold online in Ireland at thewineshop.ie