I'm in a wine shop in Tbilisi, with a silhouette of Pushkin on the door.
There's a speech bubble emanating from his cut-out visage, saying something profound and poetic about the unparalleled joys of the fermented grape. And inside, a friend of the owner is pouring me samples while explaining the business to me.
It's one of those little wine shops that's more the product of passion than of a profit motive, so the story is quite an enjoyable one to hear. But the conversation soon turns to graver themes.
See, I'm recovering from the shock of the car accident which I was in today, and my host is recovering from 27 years of total estrangement from his family and every single person he knew during his childhood.
Before I go into that, however, I invite you to go grab a glass of red. 'Cause I need to talk to you about a subject which is uppermost in the mind of everyone who visits this sainted land of Sakartvelo:
I need to talk to you about wine.
To set the scene: a few days ago, on the same day I went to the Stalin Museum, I also spent a couple of hours in a place called Uplistikhe, perched above the fast-flowing and correct-pronunciation-defying River Mtkvari.
Uplistikhe is an ancient stone city, ranging up the side of a large hill. These days it's mostly inhabited by lizards, but two or three millennia ago, it offered all the necessary elements of a fabulous night out in the ancient world.
The heathen citizens who lived up here left a ruin that clearly illustrates their appreciation for ‘the good life’. The city’s main centre of worship, a temple to the Sun Goddess, sits near the top of Uplistikhe and features a huge open area large enough to be a dancefloor (which it may well have been), with a pit in the middle for sacrifices. You could start your evening there – or, if that wasn’t your thing, you could take in an early show at the public theatre, carved completely out of rock with a huge Grecian arch over the stage and a mountain view behind it (visible even from the cheap seats).
After that it would probably be dinner time, so you’d head to one of the outdoor dining areas, where deep, teardrop-shaped tandyrs (those ovens invented in Eurasia, which eventually gave us tandoori chicken and naan bread after the design migrated along the Silk Road to India) were carved into the ground.
You might also stop in at the pharmacy – which has little rock shelves to hold different herbs and other medicines – and grab something to help you through the following morning’s hangover.
Next to the pharmacy is a 2,000-year-old wine press, where you could watch the grapes being trampled and the skins being compressed to make chacha (something like grappa, but stronger).
Finally you'd probably head up to the library area and common hall, where stone bookshelves held reading material for you to enjoy while you sipped your wine on comfortable animal skins or relaxed in a warm communal bath – provided, that is, the bath itself wasn’t filled with surplus wine.
I’m not kidding; this place was the luxury resort of ancient stone cities. And, as always in Sakartvelo, the wine was central to the culture. When they say that grapes are sacred here, they mean it.
Personally, I’ve already enjoyed a glass or two at several of the little Georgian restaurants that are generously dotted around Tbilisi’s Old Town and inner city.
I've also visited Kakheti, the main wine-growing region, where I learned the difference between a Saperavi and a Mukuzani (both made from the potently purple-coloured Saperavi grape, but one fermented with the skins still on and therefore incredibly rich and 'earthy'). There, after staying with a babushka who greeted me with a cake and a karaf of 65% proof homemade chacha, I got horribly drunk over lunch the next day, while listening to local vintners chatting with a visiting British wine critic.
The British guy slooshed the local produce around his mouth thoughtfully before dumping it into a spitoon. I, on the other hand, did no such thing. Every drop of the white, the red and the amber (yes, they have a third colour in Sakartvelo) went straight into my thankful bloodstream.
But the spectre of road travel in this country hung heavily over that journey, as it has with every other I've taken this week. The minibus ride to Kakheti had been harrowing, and the return leg was far, far worse. Massive potholes on the highway compounded the threat of a head-on collision, which was already high thanks to drivers' impatience and the almost complete lack of passing lanes. It was a nightmare.
A couple of days later, i.e. early this morning, I found myself sitting in the front passenger seat of a car in central Tbilisi, waiting for the driver to deal with documentation and get us underway.
By "us", I mean myself and the two Russian women in the back seat. We were headed for a place called Kazbegi, high in the Caucases mountains, and the driver was to be our Russian-speaking guide.
About ten minutes into the journey, as we were flying along one of Tbilisi's arterial roads, a van suddenly tried to cut us off. The driver didn't notice, and kept his foot on the accelerator. The van consequently side-swiped us, making contact right at the point where I was sitting. Had the impact been much harder, it could've led to a far more serious outcome for me. Luckily, though, I was fine.
Our driver then used his horn, indicating to the van that it should stop. But the van driver had other ideas: he swerved left, pulling out directly into oncoming traffic and causing cars to scatter around him.
One can only guess that this was a ploy to get away from us and avoid insurance payouts – the rationale was probably "Well, that guy isn't going to follow me into a stream of cars coming the other way, now, is he?" But that turned out to be wrong, and what happened next shocked us all.
Our driver, without giving it a second thought, pulled left into the oncoming traffic lane, preparing to chase the van along the wrong side of a busy highway.
At this point, myself and the two Russians all yelled at the guy simultaneously. "Get his license number, and just stop!", was the general message.
Fortunately for us, the driver decided to follow this advice. He took a photo of the van's license plate, then pulled down a side street, rolled to a stop, got out and called the tour company.
I decided this was enough for me. Tbilisi's Old Town, with its cafes and bars, cobbled streets, and kooky 19th Century wooden houses (see pics below), is an incredibly chilled-out and pleasant place to puddle around in. Sakartvelo's highways, on the other hand, are a cauldron of terror. So I tried to open my door and get out.
The door decided not to co-operate; it was firmly stuck.
Hmmm.
I climbed over the gear stick, explaining to the Russian ladies that I wasn't keen to continue the excursion, on account of the psychopathic driving in this country. They agreed. "I've never seen such a thing in all my life!", one of them said – and you know when Russians say that, it's time to get off the roads immediately!
So I wished them a fabulous day, gave a similar explanation to the driver, and started in on the 45-minute walk back into the centre.
This may sound like an experience that would sour you a little on the country you're visiting. But in Sakartvelo, you can't feel sour for long. The locals are just too nice.
Long before I'd even arrived at the 'Peace Bridge' – a space-age landmark which announces that you're nearing Old Tbilisi – I'd received a gushingly apologetic phone call from the tour company. "We're SOOOOOO sorry", said the girl on the phone. "You must come in and get your money back!"
She then went on to apologise for the behaviour of every single driver in the whole of Sakartvelo.
When I got to the company's office, the two customer service people there apologised some more and handed me the money. I told them I hadn't expected a refund, since it was my decision not to continue and the accident hadn't been their driver's fault. But they insisted, saying they just hoped I hadn't been left with a negative impression of their country.
I re-assured them that I really liked their country and everything was fine. And leaving aside the roads, what I said was true ... possibly even understated a little :-)
(Note to Turkish Fucking Airlines: THIS is what customer service looks like, you retarded bunch of asshats.)
Anyway ...
Around 12 hours later, in the little wine shop, we'd moved on from an amazing selection of wine (of which I'd committed to buying one bottle) to the chacha.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the alcohol content of this stuff can range up to 65%. It's the kind of drink about which you'd imagine there are stories in circulation, involving people losing their sight and/or their legs and/or their minds.
As he poured a second shot for each of us, the shop guy (who we'll call 'Mikheil') continued the abbreviated version of his life story. I'd asked him if he was from Tbilisi, and he'd said "No, but I've lived here most of my life". His home town was called Sukhumi, which is the capital of the 'breakaway region' of Abkhazia.
You might remember that Russian presidential seat-warmer Dmitry Medvedev sent his boss's army down here in 2008, arguing that ethnic Russians living in some parts of Sakartvelo were under threat – the same justification Putin has since used in Ukraine. The result was that two slices of the country were hewn off and turned into new republics, named Abkhazia and South Ossetia respectively.
Sukhumi, Abkhazia's capital, was a Black Sea resort town back in the day, and arguably one of the prettiest towns in the entire USSR. The elite Soviet political class used to spend their vacations there, strolling along the crescent moon-shaped beach and taking dips in the deep-blue water of Sukhumi's harbour, as hills and mist-covered mountains loomed atmospherically behind the city.
Tensions between the people living there and those in present-day Sakartvelo have run high for decades, and Putin and Medvedev are far from being the first political leaders to wade into the conflict. Boris Yeltsin, for example, loudly and relentlessly supported the Georgians throughout his presidency, placing all kinds of restrictions on the Abkhaz which increased their frustration. And running through a list of his predecessors, you find similarly partisan views.
Ordinary people like my new acquaintance Mikheil were, as usual, caught in the middle of the political foodfight.
This is how Mikheil came to be in Tbilisi: during one of the many periods when tensions seemed ready to boil over, he and one other family member fled Sukhumi and ended up here. Since then, he's been unable to get a visa to go back.
This means that Mikheil hasn't seen most of his family for three decades. And you could tell, when he talked about it, that his sense of loss was still imminent.
Despite my sympathy, though, I couldn't stay in the wine shop much longer. Tonight was my last night in Sakartvelo, and also the beginning of Easter. My 'host family' had invited me to attend midnight mass with them, and although I'm not religious, it was something I didn't want to miss. I also needed to get a couple of hours sleep, because my flight back to Istanbul was at 7am.
So I told Mikheil I had to go, to which he said "Already?".
He'd clearly intended to keep pouring me free samples until one or both of us fell on the floor!
I never made it to midnight mass, and neither did my hosts. Instead, I sat with 'host mother' Nana and and her daughters Tatia and Salome, enjoying a delicious end-of-lent supper, accompanied (since this is Sakartvelo) by generous amounts of full-bodied Saperavi wine. Nana and Salome then disappeared, and I sat with Tatia, discussing art, religion, politics and love until it was clear that if I didn't sleep soon, I wouldn't have time to sleep at all.
About three hours later, I leapt out of the shower and finished packing my new wheelie bag – a task made slightly easier by the fact that we'd drunk one of the bottles of wine which I'd intended to squeeze into it!
As I wrapped the last bottle, the taxi arrived; perfect timing for the airport, but also a sad moment because it meant "Farewell Tbilisi".
Of course, with so much still to see in Sakartvelo, I'm sure this won't be the final farewell. Next time, though, I'm gonna do my best to stay away from those terrifying roads ... ;-)
There's a speech bubble emanating from his cut-out visage, saying something profound and poetic about the unparalleled joys of the fermented grape. And inside, a friend of the owner is pouring me samples while explaining the business to me.
It's one of those little wine shops that's more the product of passion than of a profit motive, so the story is quite an enjoyable one to hear. But the conversation soon turns to graver themes.
See, I'm recovering from the shock of the car accident which I was in today, and my host is recovering from 27 years of total estrangement from his family and every single person he knew during his childhood.
Before I go into that, however, I invite you to go grab a glass of red. 'Cause I need to talk to you about a subject which is uppermost in the mind of everyone who visits this sainted land of Sakartvelo:
I need to talk to you about wine.
To set the scene: a few days ago, on the same day I went to the Stalin Museum, I also spent a couple of hours in a place called Uplistikhe, perched above the fast-flowing and correct-pronunciation-defying River Mtkvari.
Uplistikhe is an ancient stone city, ranging up the side of a large hill. These days it's mostly inhabited by lizards, but two or three millennia ago, it offered all the necessary elements of a fabulous night out in the ancient world.
 |
Lizard in The Sun Temple
Uplistikhe, Sakartvelo, 06.04.15 |
The heathen citizens who lived up here left a ruin that clearly illustrates their appreciation for ‘the good life’. The city’s main centre of worship, a temple to the Sun Goddess, sits near the top of Uplistikhe and features a huge open area large enough to be a dancefloor (which it may well have been), with a pit in the middle for sacrifices. You could start your evening there – or, if that wasn’t your thing, you could take in an early show at the public theatre, carved completely out of rock with a huge Grecian arch over the stage and a mountain view behind it (visible even from the cheap seats).
 |
Ancient 'Tandyr' Oven
Uplistikhe, Sakartvelo, 06.04.15
|
You might also stop in at the pharmacy – which has little rock shelves to hold different herbs and other medicines – and grab something to help you through the following morning’s hangover.
Next to the pharmacy is a 2,000-year-old wine press, where you could watch the grapes being trampled and the skins being compressed to make chacha (something like grappa, but stronger).
Finally you'd probably head up to the library area and common hall, where stone bookshelves held reading material for you to enjoy while you sipped your wine on comfortable animal skins or relaxed in a warm communal bath – provided, that is, the bath itself wasn’t filled with surplus wine.
I’m not kidding; this place was the luxury resort of ancient stone cities. And, as always in Sakartvelo, the wine was central to the culture. When they say that grapes are sacred here, they mean it.
 |
Main Hall and Bath Area (Library Shelves on The Right)
Uplistikhe, Sakartvelo, 06.04.15
|
Personally, I’ve already enjoyed a glass or two at several of the little Georgian restaurants that are generously dotted around Tbilisi’s Old Town and inner city.
I've also visited Kakheti, the main wine-growing region, where I learned the difference between a Saperavi and a Mukuzani (both made from the potently purple-coloured Saperavi grape, but one fermented with the skins still on and therefore incredibly rich and 'earthy'). There, after staying with a babushka who greeted me with a cake and a karaf of 65% proof homemade chacha, I got horribly drunk over lunch the next day, while listening to local vintners chatting with a visiting British wine critic.
 |
Signaghi's Old Town & Caucas Mountains
Kakheti Region, Sakartvelo, 08.04.15
|
The British guy slooshed the local produce around his mouth thoughtfully before dumping it into a spitoon. I, on the other hand, did no such thing. Every drop of the white, the red and the amber (yes, they have a third colour in Sakartvelo) went straight into my thankful bloodstream.
But the spectre of road travel in this country hung heavily over that journey, as it has with every other I've taken this week. The minibus ride to Kakheti had been harrowing, and the return leg was far, far worse. Massive potholes on the highway compounded the threat of a head-on collision, which was already high thanks to drivers' impatience and the almost complete lack of passing lanes. It was a nightmare.
A couple of days later, i.e. early this morning, I found myself sitting in the front passenger seat of a car in central Tbilisi, waiting for the driver to deal with documentation and get us underway.
 |
Kakheti's 'Amber Wines'
Signaghi, Sakartvelo, 08.04.15
|
About ten minutes into the journey, as we were flying along one of Tbilisi's arterial roads, a van suddenly tried to cut us off. The driver didn't notice, and kept his foot on the accelerator. The van consequently side-swiped us, making contact right at the point where I was sitting. Had the impact been much harder, it could've led to a far more serious outcome for me. Luckily, though, I was fine.
Our driver then used his horn, indicating to the van that it should stop. But the van driver had other ideas: he swerved left, pulling out directly into oncoming traffic and causing cars to scatter around him.
One can only guess that this was a ploy to get away from us and avoid insurance payouts – the rationale was probably "Well, that guy isn't going to follow me into a stream of cars coming the other way, now, is he?" But that turned out to be wrong, and what happened next shocked us all.
Our driver, without giving it a second thought, pulled left into the oncoming traffic lane, preparing to chase the van along the wrong side of a busy highway.
At this point, myself and the two Russians all yelled at the guy simultaneously. "Get his license number, and just stop!", was the general message.
Fortunately for us, the driver decided to follow this advice. He took a photo of the van's license plate, then pulled down a side street, rolled to a stop, got out and called the tour company.
I decided this was enough for me. Tbilisi's Old Town, with its cafes and bars, cobbled streets, and kooky 19th Century wooden houses (see pics below), is an incredibly chilled-out and pleasant place to puddle around in. Sakartvelo's highways, on the other hand, are a cauldron of terror. So I tried to open my door and get out.
The door decided not to co-operate; it was firmly stuck.
Hmmm.
I climbed over the gear stick, explaining to the Russian ladies that I wasn't keen to continue the excursion, on account of the psychopathic driving in this country. They agreed. "I've never seen such a thing in all my life!", one of them said – and you know when Russians say that, it's time to get off the roads immediately!
So I wished them a fabulous day, gave a similar explanation to the driver, and started in on the 45-minute walk back into the centre.
This may sound like an experience that would sour you a little on the country you're visiting. But in Sakartvelo, you can't feel sour for long. The locals are just too nice.
Long before I'd even arrived at the 'Peace Bridge' – a space-age landmark which announces that you're nearing Old Tbilisi – I'd received a gushingly apologetic phone call from the tour company. "We're SOOOOOO sorry", said the girl on the phone. "You must come in and get your money back!"
 |
The 'Peace Bridge'
Tbilisi, Sakartvelo, 10.04.15
|
She then went on to apologise for the behaviour of every single driver in the whole of Sakartvelo.
When I got to the company's office, the two customer service people there apologised some more and handed me the money. I told them I hadn't expected a refund, since it was my decision not to continue and the accident hadn't been their driver's fault. But they insisted, saying they just hoped I hadn't been left with a negative impression of their country.
I re-assured them that I really liked their country and everything was fine. And leaving aside the roads, what I said was true ... possibly even understated a little :-)
(Note to Turkish Fucking Airlines: THIS is what customer service looks like, you retarded bunch of asshats.)
Anyway ...
Around 12 hours later, in the little wine shop, we'd moved on from an amazing selection of wine (of which I'd committed to buying one bottle) to the chacha.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the alcohol content of this stuff can range up to 65%. It's the kind of drink about which you'd imagine there are stories in circulation, involving people losing their sight and/or their legs and/or their minds.
 |
19th Century Wooden House #1
Tbilisi, Sakartvelo, 05.04.15
|
As he poured a second shot for each of us, the shop guy (who we'll call 'Mikheil') continued the abbreviated version of his life story. I'd asked him if he was from Tbilisi, and he'd said "No, but I've lived here most of my life". His home town was called Sukhumi, which is the capital of the 'breakaway region' of Abkhazia.
You might remember that Russian presidential seat-warmer Dmitry Medvedev sent his boss's army down here in 2008, arguing that ethnic Russians living in some parts of Sakartvelo were under threat – the same justification Putin has since used in Ukraine. The result was that two slices of the country were hewn off and turned into new republics, named Abkhazia and South Ossetia respectively.
Sukhumi, Abkhazia's capital, was a Black Sea resort town back in the day, and arguably one of the prettiest towns in the entire USSR. The elite Soviet political class used to spend their vacations there, strolling along the crescent moon-shaped beach and taking dips in the deep-blue water of Sukhumi's harbour, as hills and mist-covered mountains loomed atmospherically behind the city.
 |
19th Century Wooden House #2
Tbilisi, Sakartvelo, 07.04.15
|
Tensions between the people living there and those in present-day Sakartvelo have run high for decades, and Putin and Medvedev are far from being the first political leaders to wade into the conflict. Boris Yeltsin, for example, loudly and relentlessly supported the Georgians throughout his presidency, placing all kinds of restrictions on the Abkhaz which increased their frustration. And running through a list of his predecessors, you find similarly partisan views.
Ordinary people like my new acquaintance Mikheil were, as usual, caught in the middle of the political foodfight.
This is how Mikheil came to be in Tbilisi: during one of the many periods when tensions seemed ready to boil over, he and one other family member fled Sukhumi and ended up here. Since then, he's been unable to get a visa to go back.
This means that Mikheil hasn't seen most of his family for three decades. And you could tell, when he talked about it, that his sense of loss was still imminent.
Despite my sympathy, though, I couldn't stay in the wine shop much longer. Tonight was my last night in Sakartvelo, and also the beginning of Easter. My 'host family' had invited me to attend midnight mass with them, and although I'm not religious, it was something I didn't want to miss. I also needed to get a couple of hours sleep, because my flight back to Istanbul was at 7am.
So I told Mikheil I had to go, to which he said "Already?".
He'd clearly intended to keep pouring me free samples until one or both of us fell on the floor!
I never made it to midnight mass, and neither did my hosts. Instead, I sat with 'host mother' Nana and and her daughters Tatia and Salome, enjoying a delicious end-of-lent supper, accompanied (since this is Sakartvelo) by generous amounts of full-bodied Saperavi wine. Nana and Salome then disappeared, and I sat with Tatia, discussing art, religion, politics and love until it was clear that if I didn't sleep soon, I wouldn't have time to sleep at all.
About three hours later, I leapt out of the shower and finished packing my new wheelie bag – a task made slightly easier by the fact that we'd drunk one of the bottles of wine which I'd intended to squeeze into it!
As I wrapped the last bottle, the taxi arrived; perfect timing for the airport, but also a sad moment because it meant "Farewell Tbilisi".
Of course, with so much still to see in Sakartvelo, I'm sure this won't be the final farewell. Next time, though, I'm gonna do my best to stay away from those terrifying roads ... ;-)
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