Tbilisi

Tedzami Valley Wine: Cracking the Kvevri

Gio Malatsidze kneels down and carefully brushes sand off the plexiglass lid of his kvevri. Five hundred liters of tavkveri wine have been resting for two years in this large clay vessel buried in the ground. Next to it is an open kvevri of healthy chinuri, also two years old. He gently pries the lid off, sealed with silicone putty, cautious not to let any debris fall inside, and frowns. A white film is floating on the surface. Gio dips a wine glass inside, spreading the flotsam away and takes a sip of the dark plum colored wine, washing his mouth with it. It is on the edge but can be rescued, he explains, dipping a carafe to fill our glasses so we can taste what he is talking about. Making natural wine is a risky business.

Tbilisi

First Bites: Tbilisi

The last time I was in a restaurant was March 7. I had bumped into three friends at Sulico Wine Bar and after draining our last bottle of wine we walked down to Republic 24, chef Tekuna Gachechiladze’s latest tour de force. Recalling the lustrous pork belly and the devilish succulence of her khinkali is making me salivate like a thirsty vampire, particularly after burping the blasphemous supermarket khinkali we pulled out of the freezer and boiled for lunch just now. We evacuated Tbilisi shortly after that, stoked up the wood burner in Garikula and unpacked our bags. With a pantry packed with provisions, our first weeks in the village went by as pleasantly as could be during a global pandemic.

Tbilisi

Notes on Reopening: Small Wineries on Shaky Ground

This year was going to be a big one for Oda Family Winery. Since its humble beginning in 2016, the winery and family farm-to-table restaurant in western Georgia’s Samegrelo region had been carefully expanding with the increasing popularity of its outstanding wine and formidable fare. This year, Keto Ninidze and Zaza Gagua calculated 3,000 guests would visit their restaurant, located in the front yard of their family’s oda (a traditional wooden two-storey house) in Martvili, so they emptied their savings and added new washrooms and a storage room for wine equipment, made a larger garden, and advertised for seven more employees to add to their staff of three. Then coronavirus arrived. “Thank God I didn’t hire any of the applicants and they didn’t leave their jobs,” Keto says.

Tbilisi

Notes on Reopening: An Uncertain Future for Ezo

The coronavirus infection rate is currently slowing down in Georgia to only several a day (with an occasional exception), and this is about four weeks after Easter, during which some churches insisted on still holding services and had us all biting our nails. Travel restrictions are being lifted, and the government has penciled in June 8 as the day restaurants with outdoor seating can reopen. We just don’t know what conditions will be imposed on everyone. Will waitstaff and clients have to wear masks? How many people per table? Will khinkali be served in individual portions instead of on a huge communal platter? There are lots of questions, perhaps the biggest being, “Who will survive?”

Tbilisi

At Home with Maka Shengelia: Hands in the Paska Dough

Sunday, April 19, was Easter in the Orthodox Christian world, the holiest day of the year. Like most people in today’s pandemic world, Maka Shengelia, one of our walk leaders in Tbilisi, was home being a responsible citizen. But she was also spreading butter on her own freshly baked paska, Easter bread, popular in the Eastern Church. It is a tall, dome-shaped cake, inseparable from Easter’s other “edible decoration,” boiled eggs dyed a deep magenta with endro (madder root). God will forgive you for celebrating Easter without going to church, but commemorating it without red eggs and paska is another matter entirely.

Tbilisi

Coronavirus Diary: Garikula

The aggressive spring winds took a break, and I can finally hear the village: the nearby river rolling through the valley, roosters singing, chickens gossiping and our dog barking at who knows what. Garikula is our summer retreat, but thanks to Covid-19, we got here a season early. The young cherry blossoms just popped this morning, and the tulips – gifts from our Dutch neighbors trapped in Rotterdam – opened wide yesterday while the plum, apple and pear trees are in full bloom. In ordinary times, our patio is full of boisterous friends as the delirious waft of mtsvadi roasting on oak coals fills the air. The only infections we are used to here are laughter and inebriation. But now, even our neighbor Zakhar stays away.

Tbilisi

Riravo: A Brandy Joins the Fight Against Covid-19

I don’t recall who first poured us a shot of Riravo’s plum araki, or brandy, but I do remember the surprise at the subtleness of the cool spirit as it smoothly slipped over my tongue and down my gullet. Finally, someone was making a fruit brandy that didn’t smell like a soiled pair of grandpa’s socks. Later, friends recounted a fabulous brandy tasting they attended at the Riravo distillery in Saguramo, a village just north of Tbilisi. I tightened with pangs of envy from missing out. “You have got to meet Goga, the owner,” they urged, and I agreed, wondering whom I could get to be my designated driver out to his place. In the meantime, I’d sip a Riravo pear or persimmon brandy as a digestif when opportunity called and remind myself to get out to Saguramo soon.