Wine and Weapons in the other Georgia
Traditional Georgian cuisine consists of the following:
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1. Roasted eggplant stuffed with a walnut-garlic-herb mix.
2. Dumplings (khinkali) stuffed with mixed meat
3. Cheese bread (khachapuri), the smellier the cheese, the better
4. Mushrooms fried in garlic and herbs
5. BBQ’d pork, chicken, veal or lamb
6. Tomato and cucumber salad, various strong cheeses
7. Salted and herbed nugget potatoes, roasted to perfection
8. A spicy tomato and savoury herb sauce for the meat
9. Kern baked bread shaped like long triangles
10. Stuffed roasted red peppers with walnut-garlic-herb mix
11. Heart, lung and liver mashed into a starter
12. Flavoured nuclear coloured lemonade (terragon, extra, vanilla, pear)
13. Copious quantities of sweet red and white wine
This has been the menu for the last week, and I have come to know these dishes very well, what combinations work, when to subtly remove the cheesebread because you can’t see the table from the water pouring out our eyes. It is far more delicious than I expected, and different from other cuisines I’ve had the good fortune to consume. Although slugging back sweet wine does take some getting used to.
Georgians don’t know which came first: the wine or the people to drink it. There are some 200 endemic species of grape here, and the growing, making, preserving and drinking of wine is a cherished national custom. Wine in Georgia? Believe it, in such varieties and quantities you cannot imagine. The sweet nectar of the white Rkatsitelli or red Saperavi grape is coaxed in countless homemade wineries, using century-old underground clay barrels. Visiting villages in Kakheti, the wine growing region, is far removed from your average slick western wine tour. We enter damp, dark cellars, a local family pulling out their most treasured homemade elixir with a custom display of Georgian hospitality. The wine is…complicated, young on the nose, sweet on the palate. It’s also high in sugar and alcohol, and is the oil that lubricates traditional social feasts. Tbilisi had faded into green plains covered in vineyards. Old abandoned but restored castles add a different touch, as do old men and women sitting on the side of the road, watching life and traffic go by. Our destination is Signagi, a small, beautiful town that hosts many of the country’s festivals, looking over a vast valley to the snow-capped Caucasian mountains in the distance.
A Small Note on the origins of the word Caucasian. It has come to denote people of the white race, but its origins are controversial, somewhat distasteful, and the word has subsequently been abandoned in scientific circles. From what I can gather, it was coined by a German anthropologist in 1775 who discovered skulls around the Caucuses Mountains, belonging to ancestors of the fair skinned people in the region. From this, all fair skinned people were therefore said to have origins in the Caucuses, although he conveniently ignored the fact that there were dark skinned people living in the region too. Praising this beautiful race of men, the smug anthropologist made no bones to stress that dark skinned people were degenerate, which is why race groups in the US have gone to the Supreme Court to rid English of the word. So the next time you hear a TV cop say “Caucasian, 6ft 2, carrying a large gun”, he’s using a discredited term more suited for loser asshole supremacists. End of Note.
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