A-tasting We Will Go!

 October 5, 2021

(Too beat to post last night!!!)

Today is an all-day wine-tasting tour with Gamarjoba Georgia Tours, to the Kakheti wine region of Georgia.  Ammar is still wrestling with the after-effects of all the meds he's been taking and decides that he really isn't up for a long trip on winding, steep roads without ready access to a bathroom.  Probably a wise choice;  but I'm still going.  The reception desk calls me a ride and settles on a 6 lari fare.  Somewhere between the man who makes the call, the girl who shows me the screen with the driver's info, and the other man who escorts me to the car there is a breakdown in communications.  I think this is not the man who was summoned.  This guy tries to drop me off in the middle of the Alvabari area and I have to convince him that I need the Metro station.  He is a bit disgruntled and when we finally arrive there is quite a scene when I try to give him ten lari for a six lari ride and he demands twenty.  He outweighs me by a factor of two and about a million decibels and for ten lari (about three dollars) it's just not worth the blood pressure rise!

I'm quite early to meet the person with the orange flag, so I wander a bit, taking statue photos and assuring myself that I'm in the right place.  It says Alvabari and there's a huge, red M that can only stand for Metro.  And it isn't yet 8:30.  And then it is and I don't see the magic flag!  I decide to take the phone off airplane mode and text my new friend, Baia, at the tour office.  We've become chums through Message and I take a photo of where I am to ask her if it's the right place.  Just as I send the photo I see the person with the orange flag and realize that she is actually at the far-right side of the photo!!  "Never mind!"  I send her.

This is a monument to the characters in a forty-year old movie called "Mimino"!!

There are a couple of others who are searching for her and she sends us down the street and around the corner to the tour office so we can check in.  It's such a cute little place with murals on the walls, comfy chairs, coffee, tea, and lots of kids!  We all get our temperature taken (on the hand!) and are free to help ourselves.  All the staff is decked out in their signature orange with the Trip Advisor 2020 Travelers' Choice award emblazoned on it.  One of the young men puts Georgian folk dances on the flat screen and they are absolutely fascinating!  The men do a lot of dancing on their toes, but not the tips of the toes, like ballerinas, but the tops of their toes!  It looks unbelievably painful!  The girls are in full-length dresses and appear to glide across the stage.  

One girl asks which tour I'm on and responds with "That's great!  You're with me!!" I'm happy already, and not just because we've already gotten a glass of red semi-sweet!  Presently our little group mounts up for the day's adventure.  May is our guide. (She's actually Mariam, but there are many of those - kind of like our Egyptian guide whom we called Sultan because there are a million Muhammads!)  Misha is our extremely talented driver, and my cohorts in crime are Julia and Mike from Germany and "DJ" Khalid from Saudi Arabia.  We'll learn lots more about each other as the day progresses!

May starts us off with Georgian music but then gives everyone a chance to make musical choices from her wildly varied playlist!  When DJ chooses "Shake, Shake, Shake Senora" we get a feel for how the day will go!  And we're off!!

It's drizzly and gray which will alternate with fog and actual rain;  but that's not going to matter, once we've had some more wine.  Our first stop is "breakfast" at the Badiauri Bakery.  May produces cups and a water bottle that is filled with a suspiciously red liquid!  Yay!  We get to learn a very different technique for baking a simple bread.  It's just flour, water, and salt formed into a "fat snake" shape and stuck to the sides of an open oven and baked for about five minutes!!  There are hot coals in the bottom of the oven and although it might be pleasant in the winter, I can't imagine how hot and miserable it must be to be inside that thing in the summertime!

Here's our bakery!  The photo above is right next door.

Ammar tells me that they do this is Jordan as well, but the loaves are round!

May says that the Georgians don't like things that are too sweet and they,

therefore, call this Georgian Snickers!

We each get a loaf and go back outside to sample three different cheeses to go with it!  There is a salty goat cheese and two others that I think are made from sheep's milk and all three are different varieties of delicious!  And we get to sample a treat that is the same as one I tasted in Cyprus, except this one is softer and that's better.  It's the one with a string that runs down the middle with nuts on it and is then dipped repeatedly in a mixture of thickened grape juice!  Breakfast, wine, dessert, life is good!

Misha pulls off the side of the road and May says that if we're going to drink wine all day we should see where it comes from!  We're along side a vineyard and she pulls a few bunches of grapes off the vine for us to sample.  They are so sweet and wonderful.  She tells us that if the wine ferments for only three months it will be semi-sweet but if left for six month, it will be dry.  She should know!  Her grandfather is a wine maker and she has helped him all her life!

Quick!  Don't get caught!!

And we're off, now, to the Bodbe Nunnery at St. Nino's Convent.  It's too bad that it's so foggy but we can take some atmospheric photos and we are allowed to go inside the very decorated Orthodox Christian church.  Unfortunately there are no photos allowed inside but it is quite lovely.  May tells us that there are no statues in an Orthodox church and she tells us the legend of St. Nino who brought Christianity to Georgia.  Her crypt is located here and the mosaics on the walls are outstanding!

We're not the only ones silly enough to be out in the weather!

We're here by choice!  That poor lady didn't get a vote, I'm sure!

May is a cat person!  This baby walked right into her lap and then her arms!

This is actually. more of the church than we could see with the naked eye!
!

We are only two kilometers from Sighnaghi, the City of Love.  Usually tours get to spend a lot of time wandering the narrow, cobblestoned streets and climbing the Great Wall of Georgia!  We have an altered plan based on the weather.  We pass the monument to the young, local lives lost during World War II and head to a little outdoor cafe with many umbrellas under which we can shelter and drink coffee.  The choices are espresso or American (watered down espresso!) and when I ask if there is Turkish everyone but May chimes in that that would be their choice, too!  Khalid treats us all!

We sit and watch the rain and have a wide-ranging discussion of languages and their similarities and origins.  Turns out I'm the only person here who isn't fluent in at least one other language!!  The mostly everyone's English, which is a second language for them all, is as fluent as mine!  There's a mention of the word for thief and when I say that it sounds like "gonif" which I don't identify as Yiddish, Mike immediately knows that I'm Jewish and says that he is, too!  There are so many surprising links among the five of us!  We are becoming such a close-knit group!  During a later discussion we discover that both the guys are in telecommunications and the both Julia and May are lawyers!  I'm the only hydrogeologist though, so I teach them the three rules of hydro - water is wet;  water runs downhill; and payday is every other Friday!

It's about time for lunch!  Misha drives us just a little ways to our restaurant and we go up the outside stairs and find our table, then decide to check out the restrooms before we eat. Back down the stairs and around the corner (yes, it's still raining but who really cares!  My head is drenched but my jacket has kept the rest of me dry and I'll be fine!). The icons on the restroom doors are adorable!

Everyone else seems to know what this fruit is;  but no one can find an English name for it!!

This wall commemorates the young men who died in World War II from this region.

When I come out it appears that there is a photo op with local headgear and props!  Misha does the honors for me!  When we are finished he and I go back up stairs but our group has vanished!!  He calls May and leads me back downstairs to our MasterClass in Khachapuri and when it is baked it will be served to us! 

Misha seems to love the role of photographer!  These were all his idea!

And, of course, extra cheese on top!

Now lunch begins in earnest.  There are about half a dozen Georgian specialties each on its own little plate and a carafe of red and another of white, as well as two sodas, which barely get touched. Everything is so tasty!  The most unusual, I think, is the pickled flowers!  But there is also eggplant and carrot/tomato salad and beet roots and fried potatoes and chicken shqmeruli (like we ordered from room service) and cheese.  The main course (as if we needed anything else) is BBQ pork or chicken and while we're debating where to put that, our Khachapuri arrives!  Oh my it's delicious!  But we'll never finish it!!  We give it a darn good try, though!  Surprise, surprise, we get through all the wine, though!!

Implements used for cleaning the clay vats and sampling the wine

The winery is part of an old fortress.

The wine schwein!

The tasting shall now begin!  We're off to the Corporation Kindzmarauli where we will sample four wines, two red and two white, and learn that there is a vast difference between the Georgian method of wine making and the European technique! Georgian wines are fermented in clay vessels that impart their own unique flavor!  We tour the facilities, including not just the bottling assembly line, but also the laboratory where two lab-coated ladies are running tests on the products.

The Legend!  AKA The Arabian Prince!  

White number one - the red symbol says that it was aged in clay.

White number two

Red number one

Red number two

This is cool because DJ and I had laughed earlier about the bread being

shaped like a kayak - and what would happen when it became water-logged!

Our first white is dry and extremely smooth with that unique flavor profile!  I was prepared to be disappointed and boy was I wrong!  Its delicious! The second white, European, is a smashing dessert wine!  Way too easy to drink!  Number three is the first red and is a tiny bit sweet.  I think it would be easy to finish a bottle of this one all by yourself! The fourth, also red, is made from a local grape and is dry and is often used to celebrate special occasions.  One glad of this would last quite a while.  It's definitely a sipping wine and is quite marvelous.

The testing room has art works on the wall that are for sale and Mike and Julia select several to take home. I locate the shop (be quiet!!) and find that my favorite wine comes in the most unusual bottle and is so inexpensive that I can think of no reason to leave it on the shelf!

And we're off to our last stop, the Khareba Winery where we are greeted by four musicians! What a treat! There are miles of tunnels where the wines are stored and we even see the stash that belongs to the US Embassy!  Everyone gets a giggle out of that!

We are served bread with grape oil and, of course, cheese, before we get to sample their dry red wine.  Most everyone loves it enough to purchase a second glass;  but I'm such a light-weight that one was plenty for me!  (After looking at the photos, I guess there was a white as well!)

We stagger (all right, maybe that's only me) back to our chariot and begin the long journey home.  May's playlist is perfect and there is basically no conversation, just like any field trip you've ever been on! Back at the tour office and we all come inside for one last glass and toast to a perfect day!  Khalid actually has chacha (the strong, local spirit made from grapes and reminiscent of vodka or zinvania or arak) and he is gracious enough to let me have a taste.  I sure don't need it now, but it sounds like a good souvenir!)

May walks me outside and calls me a ride.  She wait 'til he arrives and sees me safely settled in before she goes back to the troops.  She's promised to watch her screen to make sure I make it home safely.  When I arrive I find Ammar waiting in the restaurant where he proceeds to tell me how worried he has been.  Admittedly we only had wifi at lunch and at the office and we got back much later than anyone anticipated, between the weather and the good company.

During the day he was able to find some medicine and he is feeling much better! That bodes well for tomorrow!~