During our visit to the Kakheti region, right after visiting the marvelous Tsinandali festival, we headed towards the border, around 40 km further from Tsinandali to visit the Khareba Winery. It’s a place that wonderfully displays all aspects of the Georgian traditional wine. They offer you a tour of their cellar, an almost 8 km long tunnel, connecting 13 galleries. You learn all about the conditions and temperatures ranging from 12-16°C, ideal for storing and ageing their wine. This wouldn’t be a proper tour without wine tasting of course, including a brief introduction to the history of Georgia rich with wine and some local snacks like Churchkhela.
What surprised us very nicely as well, were their Culinary Masterclasses, where guests get an insight into traditional Georgian cooking, including baking bread in a clay oven (more in my post about Lavashi bread) or making Churchkhelas which you had tasted in your wine tasting already (an old lady teaches you how to properly dip walnuts on a string into a thick mixture of grape juice). Here you can also learn how to roast a proper barbecue (mtsvadi), cook Khinkali (Georgian dumpling you are literally unable to miss during a visit to Georgia), and prepare Khachapuri (a very cheesy bread dish also very traditional). We haven’t tried making the last three yet but can’t wait to attempt on our next visit. Besides eating and cooking, you can also participate in a short pottery master class, where you can make your own miniature Quevri, and with the help of the kind ladies sign it with your name in the Georgian alphabet. One way or another, it is definitely worth spending a day trying out these activities that each come with their own story.
The main reason we went there, however, was to learn how to harvest wine and experience the whole process of how wine is made. Once you arrive, they await you with a touristic, electric trolley, like at mini golf, yet drive you into the middle of their vineyard, where you are dropped off to collect and learn how to harvest grapes. The Khareba Winery, as we learned, cultivates over 30 different grape varieties, some being typically Georgian like Saperavi or Kisi, some more of the European variety like Merlot or Chardonnay.
What I really liked during this visit is that the locals walk you through every step of the wine-making process. After we collected our buckets of grapes, we were brought to a large, wooden tub. Since this place is quite touristic, they were equipped with pairs of white rain boots, which we slipped into before climbing into the tub and beginning to crush our grapes. I really enjoyed this activity, and there was even a musical aspect added. Five men, dressed in traditional Georgian clothing stood by like a choir, singing a few songs and chants from the local culture. They said these exact songs were sung from the beginning of wine treading hundreds of years ago, when men and women stomped on the grapes, crushing them to the beat.
After the stepping ritual was finished, we used a giant wooden spoon to hurdle all the grapes into an ancient strainer, where only the juice from the grapes was collected. They then explained to us that the liquid juice was to ferment. The residue of the fruit was burnt at the right temperatures to create the local brandy Chacha, usually containing about 40-60% alcohol. Leaving wine to ferment underground in up to 3 meters deep ceramic vases called Quevris, is said to be very specific for Georgian winemaking. You can read more about this local habit in one of my posts dedicated to the art of making wine in Quevris, what they look like, what a specific symbol they are to Georgia as a whole, and more about the process.
