Georgia

Georgia climbs from the subtropical Black Sea shore to the glaciers of the Greater Caucasus along its northern edge, where peaks such as Shkhara and Kazbek rise above high valleys like Svaneti, its villages guarded by medieval stone towers. The low Likhi Range splits the country: the humid west, around the old Colchis plain, grows tea and citrus, while the drier east has the vineyards of Kakheti’s Alazani valley. The Mtkvari flows east through Tbilisi towards the Caspian.

Skulls found at Dmanisi, nearly two million years old, are among the earliest human remains outside Africa, and jars with traces of wine show grapes fermented here some eight thousand years ago. Kartli adopted Christianity in the 330s through St Nino. Under Queen Tamar, around 1200, Shota Rustaveli wrote The Knight in the Panther’s Skin. Russia annexed eastern Georgia in 1801, Soviet rule began in 1921, and Stalin, born in Gori, went on to lead the Soviet Union. Independence returned in April 1991.

A supra, the Georgian feast, is steered by a tamada who proposes toast after toast, and men’s choirs sing in close three-part polyphony. Wine is still made in qvevri, clay jars buried to the neck in the earth, and the table fills with khachapuri, bread around molten cheese, and khinkali dumplings. Saperavi wine, Borjomi mineral water and hazelnuts lead exports, Chiatura has mined manganese since the 1870s, and pipelines and the port of Poti carry Caspian oil and goods westward.