What a Georgia wine tour involves
A wine tour in Georgia, in the Caucasus, is a day or more in the country's wine regions with tastings, long lunches and the stories behind the wine, travelling privately with a driver and, if you like, a guide. Most trips head east from Tbilisi to Kakheti, Georgia's main wine region, but there is good wine to be found in Kartli too, close to Gori.
Because the tour is private, it is built around your group. Serious wine lovers can spend the day comparing grape varieties and styles; others are happier with one or two tastings, a good lunch and a walk around Sighnaghi. We set the pace for the people travelling, and the driver means nobody has to worry about the drive back.
Every tour below is a starting point. Tell us what you like to drink and how much time you have, and we will shape the route around it.
8,000 years of Georgian winemaking
Georgia has one of the oldest winemaking traditions in the world, with archaeological evidence of winemaking going back around 8,000 years. Traces of wine found in clay jars at Neolithic sites south of Tbilisi are among the earliest known anywhere.
Wine runs through Georgian life rather than sitting alongside it. The grapevine appears in church carvings, and tradition holds that St Nino brought Christianity to Georgia carrying a cross made from vine branches. Families still make their own wine in village cellars, and the country grows hundreds of native grape varieties, from the deep red Saperavi to white grapes such as Rkatsiteli, Mtsvane and Kisi.
Your guide can explain all of this as you taste, which is where a private wine tour earns its keep. For a primer before you travel, read our guide to the best Georgian wines.
Qvevri wine: UNESCO-listed tradition
Qvevri wine is made in large clay vessels buried in the ground, a method UNESCO has inscribed on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It is the most distinctive thing about Georgian wine and the main reason many people come.
In the traditional method, the grapes go into the qvevri with their skins and sometimes their stems, ferment there, and are then sealed in and left to mature under the earth, which keeps the temperature steady. White grapes made this way take on a deep amber colour and a firmer, more structured taste than European white wine. That is the "amber" or "orange" wine that has become fashionable far beyond Georgia.
On a wine tour you can see qvevri in a marani, the traditional wine cellar, and taste qvevri wine alongside wines made in the European style, so you can decide which you prefer.
Kakheti wine tours: Sighnaghi, Telavi and the Alazani Valley
Kakheti is the heart of Georgian wine, a broad valley east of Tbilisi where vineyards stretch across the Alazani plain towards the Greater Caucasus. Most wine tours in Georgia start here, and there is easily enough for two days.
- Sighnaghi and Bodbe: a hilltop town ringed by old walls, with views across the valley, and the monastery where St Nino is buried just below.
- Telavi and around: the region's main town, with the Tsinandali estate of the poet and nobleman Alexander Chavchavadze nearby.
- Gremi and Kvareli: the brick citadel of Gremi, a former royal capital, and wine cellars tunnelled into the hillside at Kvareli.
Autumn is the most atmospheric time to go, when the harvest, known as rtveli, brings the villages to life; our month-by-month guide has more on the seasons. Read more in our guide to the Kakheti wine region, or compare it with other options on our day trips from Tbilisi page.
Wine beyond Kakheti: Gori and Kartli
Kakheti is not the only wine region within reach of Tbilisi. West of the city, Kartli has its own grape varieties and a lighter, fresher style of white wine, and it combines well with sightseeing.
Our Gori tour can include a wine stop in the Kartli countryside alongside the rock-cut town of Uplistsikhe and the Stalin Museum in Gori. It suits travellers who want history and wine in the same day, or who have already seen Kakheti and want to taste something different.
Uplistsikhe is one of the oldest settlements in the country, a town carved into a rocky bluff above the Mtkvari river, and wine was part of life there too. Pairing it with a tasting is a good way to see how deep the tradition runs. If you have more than a day, Kartli and Kakheti can be combined into a longer private trip, with a night in a guesthouse among the vineyards.
Wine and Georgian food
In Georgia, wine is drunk with food, and the best wine tours treat lunch as seriously as the tasting. The tradition is the supra, a long feast led by a tamada, or toastmaster, who raises toast after toast through the meal.
On a wine tour you might eat khachapuri, khinkali, grilled mtsvadi, walnut-rich salads and fresh bread from the tone oven, often with wine from the same village. If food matters to you as much as wine, combine a Kakheti day with our Georgian cuisine tour. We can arrange meals as part of the trip or leave them to you, and our guide to Georgian food explains what to order.
