Last Updated on 28 January 2025 by Cycloscope
Both Ramaz and the Aboviani family told us that the road to Kakheti was very easy and flat. A huge lie. There are at least 40 kilometers of uphill.
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As usual, those traveling by car only notice the climbs that require first gear. The road is very busy, and there’s not much to see, which makes the climb even more difficult. Niki is waiting for us in Manavi, where we finally arrive around 7:30 p.m.
Upon our arrival, they are still working. Niki owns one of the oldest vineyards in Georgia, where wine was once produced for kings.
It’s the first time Niki is making wine in his cellar, which is still under construction. In recent years, his wine was fermented in qvevris belonging to friends (including Soliko, whom we’ll soon mention).
The qvevris are underground but inside a building with walls and a roof. In other areas (like Imereti, for example), there is only the roof. It depends on the climate. Here, Niki is building the walls with straw, wood, and clay.
The project also includes the construction of a veranda to taste the wine. Unfortunately, the wine isn’t ready yet; it will take another three months.
Niki and his cousin are working here. We find a spot for the tent on the hill behind the house and pitch it before it gets dark. They tell us we can take a shower, and we immediately take advantage!
Meanwhile, preparations for dinner are underway. They tell us that this is the first time they’re making a real dinner there. The menu includes kebab barbecue, fried eggplant, cheese, salad, potatoes, and some strange fish.
And wine. Niki is tired after working all day in the sun. He’s a classic Georgian, speaking very slowly. For us, it’s slow, but here it’s the norm. It’s a way of speaking that relaxes you.
After dinner, they go to open a qvevri to taste the wine. It’s a delicate operation, taking about twenty minutes. For Niki, it’s also the first taste and an honor for us!
The wine is really good, though the temperature isn’t ideal for white wine (made from Msvane grapes, one of Georgia’s countless varieties). Just released from the qvevri, it’s a bit warm.
We put it in the freezer for a little while. Niki is very satisfied with his wine! We all go to sleep, and tomorrow we’ll take a tour to see the vineyards.
Under the scorching heat, we take a walk through Niki’s vineyard. The vines here are very small, and the grass isn’t cut underneath, one of the peculiarities of the organic method adopted by the members of the association.
The vineyards consist of Msvane, Rkatsiteli, and Saperavi. Niki describes the route—explaining the gradients kilometer by kilometer from his house to the next destination, home to Soliko, in the town of Bakurshike.
Niki, a former skier, is very precise about the slopes! Today’s stage is fairly quiet, with the sky covered—some luck there. The only issue is that we’ve been calling Soliko for hours without any response.
We try calling Nika, who has a vineyard five miles from Soliko, but he won’t be there until tomorrow. We call Ramaz, who confirms that Soliko has a poor relationship with the phone… we’ve noticed! He tells us to wait in the center of the village.
He’s probably calling everyone he knows to inform Soliko. Eventually, after an hour, they come to pick us up!
We finally arrive at Soliko, a big, bearded man with a bass voice. He immediately inspires sympathy. He’s bottling wine in the cellar, and the phone is somewhere—he tells us he’s been waiting for us!
A strong wind begins to blow, and the power goes out. They go to fetch a gasoline generator and finish bottling. We eat something quick and drink a delicious Saperavi, which I think is about 14°.
Saperavi is the most common red wine in Georgia, a variety that dates back to Soviet times, when the Union nearly wiped out all other varieties, focusing only on Rkatsiteli (white) and Saperavi, a simplification typical of that era.
After eating, Soliko goes to sleep; he’s tired. We wash the dishes and head to the house next door—an abandoned wooden house. It would be nice if restored, but perhaps a bit difficult, as it hangs on one side!
The day after tomorrow, there will be a supra (a traditional huge dinner with music). The Japanese importer is coming, and they tell us they will sing. Soliko also sings.
Just outside Soliko’s gate, I step straight into a mud puddle and tumble to the ground! The first real fall of the trip. My hand hurts a bit.
We make our way to Nika’s, where we can sleep. There’s a beautiful room with an air mattress bed.
In the room, there’s also a German guy studying “winemaking,” who will stay here for a month. We had dinner with Nika, his parents, and the German guy (whose name I can’t remember). He hasn’t said a word since we arrived.
Nika lives in Berlin during the winter. He’s a sculptor, and you can see some of his work and designs here. The labels on his bottles are beautiful.
His parents, on the other hand, are retired physicians. And like here, the day after tomorrow, there will be a supra with the Japanese!
A Georgian Supra
We go to visit Nika’s vineyard, and then we head back to Soliko. The house is upside down—there’s a woman! It’s his wife, Nino, who is cooking five or six dishes at once, and another woman has been hired for major spring cleaning, though a bit late.
I know there will never be a free stove for our parmigiana! So, we help (or at least try to) Nino in the kitchen. I chop tons of that damned coriander, which is used and abused everywhere in Georgia.
The dishes never stop piling up, as the sink keeps filling again! By around 5 p.m., most of the work is done. The Japanese are expected at 7:00 p.m., and other friends are also coming, almost all winemakers.
We’re supposed to be fifteen to twenty people. We set the table in the great hall on the first floor, as rain starts to fall. Around 6:30 p.m., people begin to arrive, and an hour later, the Japanese crew shows up, accompanied by John, an American who moved to Sighnaghi fifteen years ago.
He organizes wine tours and owns two restaurants. The Japanese group includes Reiko, the importer; her daughter and her boyfriend; and Eriko, a traveling chef who studied in the Marche region of Italy for three years.
We head down to the cellar with Soliko to taste the new wine directly from the qvevri. The Japanese are, well, Japanese—armed with cameras and super lenses. Very polite, always saying thank you, and very sweet. Eriko speaks perfect Italian and is a fascinating person with a wealth of knowledge about food.
After the tasting, we go to eat! And we can finally drink “for real”! Apparently, we’re more than fifteen people, and some guests end up eating in the kitchen with Nino.
First, the menu
- Tomatoes stuffed with coriander and other herbs
- Eggplant stuffed with coriander and other herbs
- Bell peppers stuffed with rice
- Lamb
- Roast beef
- Potatoes
- Cheese
- A good sauce
- Salad of tomatoes and cucumbers
- A red turnip sauce
- … And a lot of wine!
The American starts giving a speech explaining what a supra (banquet) is and who the tamada (the person responsible for keeping the table “alive” with toasts) is.
The problem is, John takes this tradition a bit too literally, making a toast every five minutes. They drag on a bit too long and feel a bit too touristy, like “the brotherhood of the wonderful Japanese culture and the ancient Georgian culture…” and, as Gocha Paliani would say, “ie and ie and ie.”
Furthermore, while he’s giving the toasts, we all have to remain silent. I’m sitting next to Eriko, who, like us, can’t take it anymore! Then, they start to sing, and it sounds great, but even this doesn’t feel spontaneous—it seems prepared for the Japanese.
The Japanese, however, just wanted to drink and chat! But aside from that, the food was delicious, and the company was great. Soliko was quite drunk and started saying we were his children, and we love this father!
When everyone leaves, we help clean the table. I chat a little with Nino, and Daniele and I watch the game with Soliko.
Supra on supra, by Nika
We woke up late and called Nika to invite ourselves to his supra, only to find out that it was at lunch, in half an hour! We rush over, a bit dazed, stop to buy bread, and arrive around 1 p.m. The Japanese are late.
They’re probably still recovering from yesterday’s supra. Nika is also quite upset—the German volunteer left without explanation, leaving Nika (who had turned down other offers of help due to lack of space) without any assistance.
We prepare watermelon juice with mint, as it’s very hot today, and thankfully, they’ve made a light lunch. Again, a degustation from the qvevri. Today, John is a bit more dictatorial and around 4 p.m., announces that they must leave.
The Japanese would have gladly stayed longer, especially Eriko, who seemed the least tired of tasting!
After they leave, it’s just us and Nika. His mom, Luna (also known as Signora Cucurulla), prepares coffee (with a Moka pot!) and we drink a little more wine. Nika drinks a lot and gets drunk.
We talk about a lot of things: life, art, religion. Nika’s family is Catholic, and there are only about 1% Catholics in Georgia. He says they struggle to find work (here, you need to be friends with a priest, but an Orthodox one), and there is a lot of racism.
He feels like a stranger in Germany because he’s Georgian, and like a foreigner in Georgia because he’s Catholic and has lived in Germany for over twenty years.
But suddenly, he has an epiphany and remembers that in less than half an hour, Ramaz will be here with other Japanese—journalists!
We scramble to get up, washing the dishes in record time. Luna quickly prepares another Khachapuri, and Nika tries to recover from his hangover. We’re still washing up when Ramaz and the Japanese arrive.
Nika has to start all over again—taste this, taste that. But this time, the mood is different. The Japanese group consists of three people: a journalist with a huge head, a photographer, and a girl who just takes photos with her phone. Maybe a secretary?
The journalist is quite strange—he has his own wooden cup and only drinks wine from it! After we’ve washed a ton of glasses, going to people’s houses with your own glass doesn’t seem very polite…
But it gets worse. The journalist tastes the wine, takes just a sip, and throws the rest on the ground! Nika tries to tell him not to do that a couple of times but eventually gives up. If someone did that in my house, I’d probably react much more strongly!
And in the meantime he asks a lot of questions about why and wherefores Nika does the wine, citing his knowledge on ancient tradition of Georgian wine (from Wikipedia) until Nika interrupts the poem saying that the wine is made to earn money! Nika is now quite serious, doesn’t look drunk no more.
Ramaz is immediately going to speak with the mother of Nika, freeing himself for a few hours of the Japanese. Poor Ramaz, who knows for how many days he might be their driver!
As soon as they go Nika literally lies down on the ground! It was definitely, shall we say, a Japanese a bit unusual.
But Nika’s hangover is not past at all, he wants to go buy beer to watch the game at midnight. He walks through the countryside with Daniele while I help the mother to fix the chaos again.
Nika’s father is angry with his wife because she let Nika go alone in the dark! It’s very tender, the mother points out that the child was now 42 years but he set off with the flashlight to meet him.
Just then Daniele and Nika return to the fold. We fix the TV on the terrace but already during the national anthems, Nika is sleeping. I resist until the end of the second half (almost) and I go to sleep. Daniele is stoic and watches the whole game!
We’ll spend another two days at Nika’s house. He needs to go back to Tbilisi the day after tomorrow, and he’ll give us a lift with his van. We enjoy our time helping with labeling, which, like everything else here, is done by hand, bottle by bottle.
Daniele also helps cut the grass in the vineyard (which is 2 meters high). No machines here—just a scythe, shears, bare hands, and elbow grease. We go to Soliko to pick up some of our bags, only to find out the Japanese journalist has been there for six long hours.
He talked about how wine in a qvevri is alive, but once it’s in bottles, it’s dead, and he performed some kind of ritual to “propitiate” the wine!
We have another lunch with a couple of Canadians, who are traveling around tasting wines and scrounging lunches. Tomorrow, we’ll head back to Tbilisi to get our Azeri visa—hopefully!