Tbilisi

Georgian Moonshine and a Countryside Feast

Here's a flashback to our special event in the countryside of eastern Georgia, where we learned about the process of making chacha, the ubiquitous moonshine culled from the remnants of winemaking. The day culminated in this epic feast. Stay tuned for the announcement of future dates!

Tbilisi

Rhea’s Squirrels Café Gallery: Cheese Pie, With a Mission

The kids were playing in the park, and Dad needed a cup of coffee for the caffeine boost to keep up with his daughter. Luckily there was a café nearby – where you would least expect one. The park is a modest little playground patch in a residential neighborhood across from the funicular that hauls people up and down Mtatsminda Mountain to the amusement park and restaurant above the city. The café is on the ground floor of a Communist-era apartment block, just a couple dozen paces away. It was everything a little coffeehouse should be: warm, cozy, quiet and wheelchair accessible.

Tbilisi

Wine Thieves: Georgia’s Vinous Bad Boys

In the 1975 short film Gvinis Qurdebi (Wine Thieves), four mischievous villagers sneak into a stingy neighbor’s wine cellar, crack open his kvevri (enormous ceramic urn) and start drinking the wine stored inside. As they get drunk and rambunctious with toasts and song, they wake the winemaker who ends up joining them. It is in this same spirit of Georgian joie de vivre that Avto Kobakhidze, Givi Apakidze and Zaza Asatiani have come together to take other people’s wine and sell it under their own label, Wine Thieves.

Tbilisi

Tbilisi's Buzzing Bazaar

The Dezerter Bazaar is a beautiful behemoth of a place that serves as the main focus of our Tbilisi walk. Get ready for its extensive selection of wondrous wares!

Tbilisi

Culinarium-Khasheria: Good For What Ails You

For 2,000 years, people have flocked to the Abanotubani baths, whose hot sulfuric waters have long been fabled to possess magical healing qualities. The Persian king Agha Mohammad Khan soaked there in 1795, hoping to reverse the effects of the castration he suffered as a child. He dried off, found his conditioned unchanged and razed Tbilisi to the ground. While people continue to espouse the curative properties of the sulfur baths, we can only vouch for their powers to relieve stress, loosen up sore muscles and help poach the hangover out of you. It is the latter attribute that inspired the local chef Tekuna Gachechiladze to open a restaurant last year that might not cure erectile disorders, but is definitely designed to nurture alcohol-stricken bodies back to life.

Tbilisi

Andro Barnovi: In Service of Wine and Country

Drive west of Tbilisi for about an hour on the backroad to Gori and you will find yourself in the heart of the Shida Kartli wine region. It is an awesome expanse of plains, rolling hills, jagged ridges and hidden valleys that provide a myriad of terroirs that grow some of Georgia’s most exclusive grapes. In ancient times, these were the grapes for the wine of kings. On a warm spring afternoon, Andro Barnovi was tying up vines to the trellises in his vineyard and nursery, four hectares of hearty, clayey soil in Tsedisi, a remote Kartli village 810 meters above sea level. Part of the Ateni wine region, Tsedisi is said to have the richest soil and best microclimate in the area.

Tbilisi

Apples and Oranges in Tbilisi

Boxes of apples about to be put for sale at a kiosk at Tbilisi's Deserter's Bazaar, which is packed with interesting and tasty wares and is the focal point of our walk in the city. (Photo courtesy of David Greenfield)