Kakheti: Georgia's wine country

Georgia has a serious claim to being the birthplace of wine, with archaeological evidence of winemaking going back around 8,000 years. What makes it more than a slogan is that the ancient method is still the working method: wine fermented and aged in qvevri, large clay vessels buried up to the neck in the ground. The practice is inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.

Kakheti, in the east against the Caucasus, is where most of it happens. This is not a region that built a wine industry for tourists; it is a region where almost every family has made wine for as long as anyone can trace, and the tourism arrived afterwards.

Sighnaghi sits on a ridge with the Alazani valley below it and the wall of the Caucasus along the horizon. It is small, walled, restored, and on a clear evening the view from the town is one of the best in the country.

Bodbe Monastery is a few minutes away, in cypress gardens, and holds the grave of St Nino, who brought Christianity to Georgia in the fourth century.

Telavi is the working capital of the region — less picturesque than Sighnaghi, more Kakhetian, and the better base if you intend to spend two or three days here rather than one.

This is the whole difference between a good day and a forgettable one.

Book ahead, by phone or through someone who can call in Georgian. The large commercial cellars take walk-ins and give you a standard tasting. The small family producers — the ones you came for — need notice, and when they have it they will open several bottles, take you down to the qvevri and talk for two hours.

Ask for amber wine. White grapes fermented on the skins in qvevri, which is the style Georgia is known for and which tastes like nothing you have had elsewhere. Saperavi is the red to know.

Do not drive. Tastings here are generous and refusal is not really understood. Take a driver — it costs less than you think and removes the only real risk of the day.

Eat. Kakhetian food with Kakhetian wine, at a table, slowly. If you are offered a supra with a tamada leading toasts, cancel whatever was next.

Late September and October is rtveli, the harvest. The valley is working, the wineries are open late, and in many places visitors are handed a bucket and put to work. If wine is the reason you are coming to Georgia, come then.

May and June are green, quiet and comfortable, and everything is open without the harvest crowds.

Summer is hot on the valley floor. Winter is cold and many small producers are simply not receiving visitors.