Kakheti

What you would see

Sighnaghi hill town

A small walled hill town looking out over the Alazani valley to the Caucasus, restored in warm brick and red tile, with a defensive wall you can walk. Georgians call it the city of love because the registry office there marries couples twenty-four hours a day.

Bodbe Monastery

A working convent fifteen minutes from Sighnaghi, in a garden of cypresses on the edge of the escarpment, where St Nino — the woman who converted Georgia in the fourth century — is buried. A spring below the church is still a pilgrimage.

Wine cellars in Telavi

Kakheti has been making wine for eight thousand years — the oldest continuous winemaking anywhere — and still ferments it in clay qvevri buried in the ground. Cellars around Telavi open their doors for tastings, usually with bread, cheese and no hurry.

Alaverdi Cathedral

An eleventh-century cathedral standing alone in the vineyards with the snow line of the Caucasus filling the horizon behind it. For nearly a thousand years it was the tallest church in Georgia. The scale of it in an empty plain is the whole point.