In Georgia, “You’ll rarely drink wine without food and rarely eat without wine,” promises Sarah May Grunwald in her Tbilisi guide for Jancis Robinson’s website.
If we had our way, the Georgian tradition of ‘supra’ will become the next ‘hygge’. Georgia’s cultural of celebrating anything and everything with lashings of delicious local food and wine is one trend we’d love to see hit the UK.
Georgia is currently celebrating Alaverdoba or harvest festival – marked with a ceremony at the striking Alaverdi Cathedral in whose monastery is hidden a marani where wine has been made since 1011. This time of year is one of the most exciting times to visit Georgia. Passionate Georgia-ophile and official Georgian wine ambassador, Sarah May Grunwald (AKA @TasteGeorgia), hit the nail on the head in her Tbilisi guide for Jancis Robinson when she said that in Georgia, “you’ll rarely drink wine without food and rarely eat without wine.”
This is the time of year to experience Georgia’s bountiful harvest in all it’s glory.
So what can you look forward to? In a word: nuts.
Harvest has begun for Georgia’s other famous crop – walnuts. Georgian cuisine would be lost without these hard-shelled workhorses. Walnuts are ground into garlicky pastes, spread over meat and salad, or stuffed into vegetables to give Georgian food its trademark nutty tang.
The ultimate symbiosis of these two autumn harvests is the quintessentially Georgian snack, Churchkhela. These unusual looking snacks are made of walnuts coated in concentrated grape juice left over from the harvest.
For more about the special relationship between Georgian wine and food check out this piece from Intrepid Travel.
