Wednesday, 24 June, 2015

After breakfast we head out in the bus to the ancient village of Vardzia. There are two parts to this including the spectacular 12th Century Vardzia cave city complex where Queen Tamara reined and defended Georgia against invaders.

Our first visit is to the ancient wine village. It is up the hill a fair ways and I became quite exhausted and sore so not many pictures. The village once held 25 wineries but was eventually raided and mostly destroyed by the Ottoman Turks. This type of thing has been a regular occurrence for the Georgians – invaded and under control for a while. In recent times it was the Soviets and then even more recently the Russians.

We then started down hill to go visit the caves next. This was almost as difficult for me as the walk up as my legs were totally thrashed. Then our Interloper, Carla, badly injured her ankle after a slip. When we got to the bottom, it was decided that neither Carla or I would continue on into the caves. Besu took us back to the hotel, me for rest Carla for ice treatment. The following photos of the caves were taken by Julie so I don’t really have any commentary.

In the mean time, back at the ranch, I had lain down and could not sleep, so I thought, but 50 minutes went by before Besu called out to get back on the bus. Carla came out with her leg strapped. They did not have any ice so put a cold beer bottle on her ankle for a while to try to reduce swelling. We drive back to the caves car park and after a while, the guys arrive from way up the hill. We then drive to a nearby restaurant. It is new but I must have still been in a bad way as I can remember very little about it.

After lunch we go to an old farmhouse that is primarily used for housing livestock as one could tell from the nose.

We then drive to another live farm. Walking there, the road is getting muddier and muddier and I recommend to Carla that she go back to the bus, which she does. The guide leads the guys away from the main place to directions unknown. I stay there in the sun until later a bit of entertainment occurs.

Eventually, Dan comes and grabs me and takes me by a different route to another farmhouse. It turns out that there is to be another spread, not that long after the lunch and not that long before the coming dinner.

All in all it was an amazing and unexpected experience. Lots of wine and then the Matron brought some special vodka for us to taste. There is a photo somewhere of me with the two Patriarchs. Ah, here it is from Dan.

Turns out that we had originally been scheduled to have dinner with this group but it got cancelled due to illness. Thus we had afternoon tea and lots of drink and great company. I tried to give my Aussie cap away to the Matriarch but she would not take it.

We do not have a long walk to the bus where Carla is waiting. We drive back to the farm where dinner, do we really need it?, is waiting. This turns out to be standard fare, different from last night but not excpetional. One photo only.

Again, not enough wine. We retire for the night.

Confession time: well, we are now in Lyon, France and I have not posted anything about Georgia other than our late arrival. This is in spite of indications in earlier posts that I would catch up. Any way, I SHOULD be able to catch up a little while here as our agenda is much more limited.

One question we were asked in advance – why Georgia? We learned a lot more but in advance it was to sample the unique Georgian wines, especially, and food. I will comment in the last Post about Georgia about how successful we were. In advance, here are some scans from a Georgia tourist bureau blurb.

It is interesting that Georgia claims to be of the first wine makers in history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_wine

“Among vessels, the most ubiquitous and unique to Georgian wine-making culture are probably the Kvevris, very large earthenware vessels with an inside coat of beeswax.”

Tuesday, 23 June, 2015

Well, finally our Georgia tour beings for us. We have a good cooked breakfast at our Hotel, which is the Vinhotel in Tbilisi, and then meet our host, John Wurdeman, owner of Pheasant’s Tears winery, who we missed out on yesterday. We also meet our bus driver, Beso, and his handsome 16 seater Mercedes which will take us around for the rest of the tour. Finally, we meet Mariam, our guide for the major part of the tour. We head to Mtskheta – the ancient capital of Georgian kingdom capital (during the 3rd BC – 5th century AD) – to learn the layered history and formation of the Georgian people. John is very knowledgeable and tells us a lot about the Christian heritage of the region and the history of the various aspects of the Christian church.

The main part of this visit is the old Monastery and its relation with the early days of Christianity e.g. circa third century. John, our guide told us a lot about the early history and especially Saint Nino from the 3rd/4th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nino

Not many photos here of the monastery as, well, this is a wine and food blog.

We then drive to Iago Bitarishvili’s winery where we are to have lunch.

Iago then gave a very interesting and illuminating talk on the use of the Kvevri for producing wine. He had around seven pictures of the various stages, I wish that I had taken photos of them.

We then proceeded inside to a lunch.

Just when we thought we had seen all the food, more and more came out, again a recurring theme.

See what I mean about all the food. And this was only just lunch. Any way, we head out to our next place to stay in the area of Vardzia.

There was an initial screw-up on the assignment of rooms, not for the last time, but eventually it is sorted out.

The internet did not reach our room but worked ok in the lounge or outside. Some of us go to the main outdoor “dining room” for a few drinks which turn out to be beer or .. or .. water. We are also to have dinner here. The following are some of the ubiquitous dishes we had here and almost every other place that we went to on the trip.

In subsequent Posts I will not show photos of these generally common dishes but just highlight the unique ones.

The Trout seemed better to me as it did not seem to have the “dirty” flavour that normal ttrout does, as does the trout served on the est of the trip.

So, that is that for our first day of the tour of Georgia, about time I hear you say.