Telavi wine valley

  Telavi, Georgia
Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Oh dear - a day on the booze which started with us all drinking ceremonial bowl-fulls of Georgian wine before 10:30am and glasses of the local fire-water before 11:00! Our itinerary included stops at three different vineyards - the first is a family farm house where the elderly couple who own the place produce something crazy like 500 tonnes of wine a year!

Where the wine is stored (big pot underground)

It's a really primitive, but judging by the taste, highly sucessful process that hasn't changed in the slightest for generations. Basically, the grapes are picked, squashed and left to ferment - the natural yeast on the fruit at harvest time does the job for them. Once the work is done the wine is stored in massive ceramic jars hollowed out of the farmhouse floor and sealed. Believe me, after a few glasses (or bowl-fulls) negotiating your way around the open lids can be tricky!

The family we visited and bought wine from

From the farmhouse we go to visit one of the country's newest and biggest wine producers - this is a very slick affair and we spent quite a bit of time wandering around the warehouses and bottling plants etc. We got to taste several of their wines in the lab - a very different experience from from the last stop.

Small town en route to Tevlavi 3

After deciding it would be a good idea to line our stomachs with a late lunch (needless to say Jim maintained that "eating was cheating!") we made our way to our third and final winery. This one was set up in second half of the 19th Century and was the first European style winehouse in the country - the romantic rambling villa was set in a beautifully planted English style park. The first thing we were shown was the wine library - they had bottles from all over the world dating back to 1814 - unfortunately - or fortunately depending on your knowledge of wine - we were treated to a newer vintage before leaving.

That, at least as I remember it, was our tour of some of the vineyards of the Telavi valley. We have two nights bush camping now before moving onto Azerbaijan.