But while our trip takes us from Tbilisi to Vardzia to Tusheti, while our hosts share fresh breads and bitter walnuts, while pomegranate trees sprout on the roadside and grape vines climb every wall and fence, the wine culture proves more elusive. On our mashrutka ride from the capital to Kakheti, a hilly, wine-making region, we pass flatbed trucks loaded with crates of grapes and roadside stands selling the candle-shaped Churchkhela candies made from grape juice and walnuts. But once in town, the vineyards vanish; the only shops selling wine seem hopelessly touristy. The winery we visit, which charges separate fees to see the vineyard, winery, and museum, is the same. Maybe we are just in no mood to be inquisitive. Christine and
I are both lost in our thoughts, worrying about romantic entanglements oceans away. By the end of our trip, whoever wakes first sneaks out to the balcony and holds her cell phone over the edge, straining to catch a glimmer of Wi-Fi from the guesthouse two doors away. We make a solemn tableau—she sitting on a low stool beneath our damp laundry on the line, I standing behind her, holding out our phones like magic mirrors. Who is fairest? Who is loved? Then, wandering the streets of Telavi at sunset, a woman gestures to us from the second-story balcony of a tilting, wedding-cake house. “Coffee?” she offers. We follow her up a dark, narrow staircase and onto a back veranda where a family of seven are sitting in the waning sun. They smile at us gently, like
SWEET DIGS The kvevris used for grape fermentation are typically made of clay, unique to each region, with most Georgian families hewing to the same patch of soil for generations. They are sometimes lined with beeswax, and coated with a lime-based mortar before burial.
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