Wine harvest in Georgia

The great wine of Kakheti, Georgia!

Wine, glorious wine!

The Georgians will tell you; they were the first to make wine. It is true that wine, grapes and all paraphernalia related to wine-making are omnipresent in the Republic of Georgia. The evidence is everywhere. Ancient markings on churches and monuments, on tombstones, wrought-iron decors of all kinds, horns in which to savor your favorite, grapes growing on every balcony, some with incredible grape stock so large you wonder how old it can be, grapes on every market stall, it is for sure that you cannot disassociate wine and the Georgians.

harvesting rkatsiteli in Koda

However, present him with his favorite and national dish, a steaming dish of khinkali, and he will instantly grab a beer... It does go better with ludi, I agree..

On the planet of wine below, you see Koda's rkatsiteli grapes having been through the wringer. How will this wine be in a year? Only time will tell..

Harvest is upon the Georgians once more. Will this particularly dry summer bring a superb wine? No doubt! Families who share rows of grapes in the countryside are getting organized to gather together and cut the grapes. Soon, Tbilisoba will happen and churchkhela will be made, dipping strings of walnuts hazelnuts and other goodies in tatara, a mixture of grape juice, flour and sugar. Msvadi, bbqs will be roasted on the coals and accompanied by a great deal of wine. All will be processed, and in the end, you will drink a super Saperavi(red) or a Rkatsiteli(white), or make a toast with a shot of Chacha. Then, the long winter will start..the qvevri will be full of the golden or red liquid resting until it comes to maturity.

Planet Rvino...

Grapes will be put through the wringer in this!

Rkatsiteli grapes will become a great honey-colored wine

All over Georgia, the harvest is being organized. Soon we go to the region of Kakheti and experience the flavors, the sights and the delicious result!

But first...Koda-oba.                                                                                                                                        

In Koda, the ancestral village of the B.family, a plot is tended by the members, and grapes are collected for the year's supply of wine. This was an extremely dry year, and only about 100 kilos of grapes came out of the 6 family rows. The grapes are never watered, and this year, they suffered from the extremely dry weather. More grapes will be purchased to add to this year's poor harvest, in order to have enough homemade wine for the coming year.

It's family business!

Beautiful honey color!

The grapes are put through a wringer to crush them, put into a barrel for a week, then the liquid is drained, and put into large bottles. The skins are left in the barrel and sugar is added. After a few days, when it ferments and bubbles, the pulp is used to make the powerful chacha, white if plainly distilled, or a golden brown when kept in an oak barrel after distillation. It is then called cognaki, or Cognac, and resembles the French Cognac . 

The grape juice in the large bottles is emptied and filtered several times, to remove the pulp that would make the wine less pure. It is then allowed to rest. 

The rkatsiteli grapes give a golden hue to the wine. No sulfates are added, it is pure wine. .

That is one traditional method. But of course, the method of keeping the wine in a qvevri differs a bit.

Let's go to Kakheti and see how it's done!
In Katheti, as well as in all other places in Georgia, wine is being processed in q'vevris, and in barrels. The traditional way of keeping wine in q'vevris is getting a boost these days, as it it particularly prized by tourists, and so contributes not only to the pleasure of the visitors, and to the national heritage, but also the economy in general. 

Grapes being brought to
Khareba Winery, Kakheti

A marani prior to the filling up stage
and a beautiful Georgian to boot!

At the Twins Cellar, in Napareuli,
each of the 100 + qvevris is being filled
with up to 6 tons of pressed grapes

A marani  is a set of q'vevris that are literally buried in a trench, then held straight and then covered with soil.

This pulp is what is left after
the distilled "chacha" has been made.

The marani looks like a cellar, where the wine caskets are below your feet! It is quite impressive to see how the caskets are filled to the rim with the wine! Others wait to become chacha and the smells of the grapes skins in fermentation fill the room. In Napareuli, in Kakheti, the Twins Cellar, a rather small organization compared to huge competitors in the region, turns out 280 000 liters of wine per year.

The Khareba Winery, a local winery also referred to as Gvirabi, because it stands for "tunnel", holds an immense reserve of wines, mainly kept in barrels and other massive vessels from the soviet age. A little dark to take good pics in there, but a great place for tourists! In this picture, you see one of those great big vessels. The wine is actually carried in the pipes that you see going down the tunnel. It is impressive. The only drawback is that the wine tasting here is made of ...European wines!!  

Remnant of the Soviet era.
A great wine vessel..

You can buy their wines close to Irakli II place in Tbilisi, where they have a wine-tasting room and no doubt at the winery... 
In the gvirabi, you will see a variety of ancient and modern tools used in wine making, as well as some of their wines. It is definitely a must-see! This is not the q'vevri method, however!

Napareuli's winery is interesting in the way that it is set-up. I do not recommend staying there, simply because the food and lodging were average in quality and above average in price, and the mosquitoes brought on in the chacha making season were awful. The rooms are situated right above the marani, and they smelled of alcohol. Touring the museum can be of interest. Disregard the poor English translations, for the information is actually quite good. 

Visualize the fermentation process
in Napareuli Twins Cellar.

Don't leave home without it!!

The Bounties of Kakheti!

The food in Georgia!

THE WONDERFUL FOOD OF SAKARTVELO, an ongoing love story..

Meet “puri”, or bread in Georgian! This one is a special shape because it goes through a special process.

Here in Georgia, they cook bread in a round clay oven. It looks somewhat like a washing machine tumbler, and has hot ambers and a small fire in the bottom. The sides of the oven are hot, very hot...so the baker takes a ball of dough, and, in order to stick it to the side of the oven, has to stretch it a bit, hence the shape of the bread. When the bread is done, it falls from the side of the oven into the middle. It is then rescued and sold..It tastes, amazingly enough for us French in persuasion, like a crisp baguette! It has holes, and is crunchy on the outside and tender in the inside. Very yummy!


Other breads are cooked in regular ovens, and they don’t equal the taste of this cool one. They have loaf shapes, donut shapes and all kinds of other shapes.
Now, for a little treat, imagine this bread in a smaller size, the size of a hefty trout, let say. Now, make a slit in the middle, insert crumbled cheese, such as feta. Put it back in the oven, melt the whole mess, take it out, and then crack an egg on the top! Now, all you need is a fork! That is called “khatchapuri imayruli” and it is served on the western side of Georgia. That will equal and then surpass pancakes, I assure you! You will not want to eat for hours..but you will have to! :)
And now, for Khatchapuri, the answer to quesadilla in Georgia..devoured hot and melting..or cold and still hyper yummy! If it is filled with refried beans, like the dish on the left, it is called lobiani, because lobios are beans...just as yummy! In fact, this is not unlike Mexican cooking!



Since food is being served at all times of the day, the khatchapuri is eaten when it comes out of the fry pan, or oven. Mostly, with a cup of chai or tea. It is cut with scissors and served in pie-shaped portions. Jame! is the expression for "Eat, eat!", a national obsession, make the guests eat...

Khinkali, the answer to raviolis in Georgia. Here, they are prepared at home, or can be bought ready-made, but the taste suffers. The way to make this at home is to mix flour and water, no yeast, into a sort of bread dough. The dough is then kneaded with the fists and allowed to rest a while. Then, the dough is rolled very thin, and cut into rounds. Then the khinkalis are filled with a mixture of veal, beef, onions, cilantro, salt, garlic and water. The mixture is quite runny, for a very good reason. The water will eventually separate from the meat but stay in the little pouch made. That is the secret of the khinkalis: They have to
have a large amount of “juice” in them when you bite into them.

The little “bags” are sealed at the top and dropped into hot water, allowed to cook boiled for 10 to 12 minutes, and then devoured after a hefty pepper shaking. To be enjoyed with a very large beer..

The quince, or “comchi” here, is used in a variety of ways. It is boiled with a little sugar and the water that it is boiled in is served as “comchi compote” in a cup, to be had like a cup of tea, hot. Very interesting!

The pieces of quince are also eaten in a mashed form, a sort of heavy jam, used on bread. They can also be eaten in their hot syrup, or mixed with cooked white rice. Comchis are supposed to be good for your stomach and for someone with a persistent cough.

One cannot think of Georgian cooking without thinking of walnuts or "nigosi". They appear in almost every dish! Aside from satsivi which we will be covered later, they are used to season sweet and savory dishes.
One of these dishes consists of slices of eggplant, or badrigiani that have been partially peeled and then broiled to get a smoky flavor. The walnuts are then ground, spices are added, and the slices of eggplants are then slightly filled with the nuts, and folded in 3. Easy, yet delicious..By the second day, the juices of the eggplant and the walnuts mix and marry and the result is awesome!
Another use for walnuts is for a sweet dish called dzandili made of round wheat berries, cooked and cooled, mixed with honey, white raisins, and ...walnuts! Served cold in a glass.


An amazing product is made out of ...walnuts..and grapes, the second main ingredient in Georgia. It is called choorchrela. Walnuts halves are threaded on a light string, a few feet long. Then, grape juice and flour are boiled to make a heavy paste, called pelamushi, and the strings of walnuts are dipped repeatedly in the mixture to become completely covered and sealed in a tough covering. Strangely enough, it does not taste sweet! The taste of the walnuts is there, and the grape taste equally present. A most interesting use of walnuts! Can be kept for months! But better eaten in the fall, after the harvest.
Walnuts agrement fish sauces, chicken sauces, turkey dishes, vegetable dishes, desserts. You will find them hidden in layer cakes, one here and there..very sparingly..















Yogurt soup! Or mazoni soupi! Now, that is odd! First, onions are fried in butter, water and rice are added, then, a little dusting of flour, then, a hefty dose of yogurt, plain, of course, and at the end, beaten eggs. Imagine Chinese egg soup and put in some yogurt. Quite tasty, but surprising. The slight bitterness of the yogurt and the blandness of the eggs mix elegantly. And where do you get your yogurt, brought home in simple glass jars and covered with a heavy cream, you say? Well, the man from the hills will sell it to you! He comes on foot leading his horse!Incredible!
The use of fruit in Georgia is equally surprising. From the pitcher of blackberry homemade juice, complete with the berries at the bottom of the pitcher and served later as a dessert, to the alubali or sour cherries dropped into your cup of tea, the uses differ so much from the Western culture!
The markets here abound with citrus fruits, principally lemons and oranges. Georgia is also well known for its citrus, as this is a country where subtropical plants grow. The lemons are used for tea, another production of Georgia, in slices, and the oranges are cut in slices, together with kiwis and bananas for fruit platters.



So, how about pakhlava? I know what you are thinking...It's Bakhlava, right? Well, no...Took me 3 years to hear that it started with a "p" sound, and it is very different from what you would think of in Greece or in Turkey, for example.It is made with mock puff pasty dough, handmade, evidently, and then, you whip egg whites and sugar until it becomes very white and thick, like a stiff meringue prior to cooking, and you add ground nuts. Walnuts are good, but almonds are nicer. Then, you make a couple of layers of that, then top with melted butter. Half-way through cooking, add honey with a brush and let it cook a little longer. You can't imagine the goodness of that. Not syrupy like bakhlava, but sticky and yummy.




Here, shown with "f or peikhoa" ..I still don't know what fruit that is, but all I know is...It's very good! any ideas of what that would be? Citrusy, and almost gelatinous, and you can eat the skin. Almost tastes like a tart kiwi or a tart passion fruit? Yummy..and it cuts the sugar high of the pakhlava..

Tried to make this delicious pakhlava at home in France last week, and, yes, as expected, it was a dismal failure...Argh! Eka is just a specialist, and I will not try to outdo her. Pretty obvious it's better in Georgia..
And now for a summer treat....MSVADI!!!  One cannot go to Georgia and not have a bbq! It would be totally unacceptable!
So, msvadi is just that, a bbq of meat. Done on champuri, or skewers, they can be pieces of meat, or kababi, a blend of ground meat that is very carefully attached to the skewer, taking particular care to take the air out of the meat. Then, it is rolled in flat bread, called lavashi, and eaten with ajika, or other hot sauce..Yum!

Happy eating, everyone!