The best Kakheti wine tours from Tbilisi

Each of our three picks stops at two or three wineries and pours at least seven wines. The Gamarjoba day pours nine wines, one at a bakery and eight at two wineries. The Telavi day’s itinerary names 8 or 9 wines and two chachas at three stops, and the operator promises at least 10 wines in all. The private Sighnaghi day pours 4 wines at its first cellar and 3 or 4 more with lunch at the second.

A family cellar is smaller and more personal than a big winery. A family marani, the home wine cellar, makes a small amount of wine and is often poured by the family who made it. A large winery pours from a much bigger range to many more visitors. The Gamarjoba day visits one of each, a family winery that shows how qvevri wine is made and pours three wines, and then KTW, a large producer. Both Eat This! days stay with independent and family producers, the smallest of them making under 10,000 bottles a year.

Yes, lunch is included on both Eat This! days, but not on the Gamarjoba day. The Telavi day serves a light lunch after a khinkali lesson and then dinner with wine at a vineyard. The private Sighnaghi day ends with a supra, a Georgian feast, at a family winery. On the Gamarjoba day, lunch is an optional restaurant stop in Sighnaghi that you pay for yourself.

Qvevri wine is made in a qvevri (ქვევრი), an egg-shaped clay vessel buried in the ground. The pressed juice goes in with its skins, stalks and pips, and the sealed qvevri is left for five to six months while the wine ferments. UNESCO inscribed the method as intangible heritage in 2013. Both Eat This! days pour it, and the Gamarjoba day’s family winery shows how it is made. The Telavi day pours three qvevri wines at a family micro-winery and visits a qvevri maker’s workshop, and the private Sighnaghi day pours the same grape made in qvevri and in steel tank side by side, which is the quickest way to taste what the clay does.

The drive from Tbilisi to Sighnaghi, about 113 kilometres, takes about 1.5 to 2 hours by car. Telavi is about 96 kilometres away over the Gombori Pass, about 2 to 2.5 hours by car, and minibuses, which usually take the longer Kakheti Highway, take 3 hours or more. Kvareli, on the far side of the Alazani valley, is about 140 kilometres and 2 hours from Tbilisi by road.

Stay in Telavi for the wine-first day, which collects guests there, and in Sighnaghi for the private day, which can start there at 10:20. Telavi is Kakheti’s administrative centre, at the foot of the Tsiv-Gombori range facing the Alazani valley. Sighnaghi stands on a hill at about 790 metres, looking across the valley to the Greater Caucasus, and is the quicker of the two to reach from Tbilisi.

Yes, you can join the grape harvest, rtveli, on the harvest days that some Kakheti wineries open to visitors, with picking, pressing and a supra lunch. The dates move with the ripening of the grapes, so book early and stay flexible.