Tbilisi Wine Museum

While researching some things to do in Tbilisi that we had not done before, I came across this blog Wander Lush written by an Australian journalist who now lives in Kutaisi, Georgia. The website turned out to be a great resource from itineraries, boutique hotel suggestions, places to shop and places to visit. The Tbilisi Wine Museum was only 5 min from our hotel and its location underground perfect for a hot day.

The museum is underground this building which holds another museum as well as some fancy shops below. Our guide spoke great English and we learned a lot about the special process of qveri wine: Georgian wine made in clay pots. Above, our guide is showing us the tool that is used to clean the qveries, a stick with cherry bark. The bark is a natural antiseptic and the large qveris take a couple days to clean, once a year. To her right is a pumpkin on a stick to take liquid out of the qveri.

Traditional Georgian wine does not separate the seeds and skin. People used to press the grapes with feet, but now many use a modern press that goes right over the qveri. While it ferments the first 7 to 10 days, it is mixed every 3 hours.

Chacha, Georgian moonshine is made what is left at the bottom of the qveri, the skin, stalks and seeds. There are several distillation, the 2nd is 4 to 16% while the third 90% is medicinal. What you see about is the chacha distillery and the bottle of chacha has honey wax to give it a nice flavor.

Being a toast master is an art and has a long history as the little figure below depicts a tamada or head of the table who is the toast master. The toast master must finish his drink before passing it on and the traditional vessels are different sizes horns. Because you cannot put the horn down, you have to finish the drink. Of course, nowadays, people drink out of glasses but dinners with our host were still accompanied with toasts. There is an order to them starting with a toast of thanks to God ending with a toast to the Theotokos, Mary.

We also visited a little exhibit this gentleman had in a room underground next to the museum. He has a display of artifacts and reproductions that he uses to teach about early Georgian history.

This underground area (which is at the level of the river) used to be an area where caravanners would put their camels. Georgia was part of the silk route so many travelers and merchants passed through.

He did a great job of asking questions in broken English and it was really interesting. We would have liked to stay longer, but a group of school children arrived with their teacher.

This was a great place to learn more about wine making (we had visited a winery on a past visit) and to understand more of the process. I remember some of my pictures of large qveri vessels that had been discovered or others that were placed underground in buildings (to keep cool). The qveris above are small ones used to store the wine after the process.

A bientôt!

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