“Lobio saved Georgia in the nineties,” quips Aleko Sardanashvili as he plonks a round clay pot of the simmering red bean stew in the middle of a loaded table of food. It groans under the weight of an assortment of Georgian feasting staples - khachapuri, lobiani, tomato and cucumber salad, sauteed potatoes garnished with greens, jonjoli salad, pickled chilies, fried chicken, tkemali plum sauce and more. We’re at Aleko’s marani (or wine cellar) in Racha – one of Georgia’s most sparsely populated regions, located in its northwestern frontier. It used to be a six-hour long circuitous route by car to get here from Tbilisi until a spanking new road launched last year cut travel time to Racha by 1.5 hours. Since then, visitor numbers have sharply increased to Georgia’s smallest wine region, a place that offers the ability to dip into family wineries in vineyards slung along the slopes of its lower valleys and drive up to high ridges for magnificent views of the snowcapped peaks of the Greater Caucasus massif, all in one afternoon – although the reverse order is more advisable, for obvious reasons.

We returned to Tbilisi in 2002 with the intention of staying one year. On that first day back, our friends took us to a chummy brick-walled cellar in Sololaki. There was enough sunlight coming down through the door to illume low pine tables and seating for fifty people max. In a refrigerated counter, menu items were displayed: beef tongue, tomato and cucumber salad, assorted cheeses, badrijani (sliced fried eggplant stuffed with a garlicky walnut paste), all the standard stuff. It was a Georgian greasy spoon, for sure, with a kitchen that would make a health inspector shudder, but the khinkali were really good, and the house wine was as decent as it comes. The name of the place was Dukani Racha. Little did we know people had been coming here for decades.