Sighnaghi and Kakheti Wine Country: visitor guide

What to expect at Sighnaghi

Sighnaghi is the most romantically sited town in Georgia, a walled hilltop settlement in the Kakheti wine region with the panorama of the Alazani River plain and the Greater Caucasus range as backdrop, its cobbled streets of 18th-century townhouses in red tile and carved wood giving it the most photogenic urban character of any small town in the Caucasus. The town is enclosed within the original 18th-century defensive walls (some of the best-preserved in Georgia, with watchtowers still intact), and its restoration since 2007, controversial in some circles for its theme-park thoroughness but effective in preserving the town's character, has made it the primary destination in Georgia for wine tourism and a significant weekend escape from Tbilisi (2.5 hours by road).

Wine

The wine is the defining reason to visit Sighnaghi and the Kakheti region, Georgia is the world's oldest wine-producing country, and the Kakheti region (which produces about 70% of Georgian wine) is where the traditional qvevri method (fermentation of whole grape clusters, including skins, seeds and stems, in large clay vessels buried underground for 6–12 months) creates the amber-coloured skin-contact whites and the deeply coloured reds that are Georgian wine's defining products.

The method produces wines with natural tannins in the white wines (due to skin contact during fermentation), amber colour (from the polyphenols extracted from the skins and seeds), and a complexity of flavour unavailable from conventionally fermented wines. These are the wines now classified by the natural wine movement as 'orange wines', though Georgians have been making them for 8,000 years without benefit of that marketing category.

Wine tourism infrastructure

The wine tourism infrastructure of the Kakheti region is the most developed in the Caucasus, over 100 family wineries offer tastings and cellar tours in the villages of Kvareli, Telavi, Tsinandali, Gurjaani and the surrounding countryside. In fact, the best single wine experience is a cellar visit at a family winery where the qvevri vessels are embedded in the earthen floor of the wine cellar, seeing the clay vessel openings at floor level, smelling the fermenting grape must in the 200-year-old cellar space, and tasting directly from the vessel with a shared drinking horn (kvevi) is a ancient experience available only in Georgia and in a handful of similar wine cultures in the Caucasus.

In addition, the Pheasant's Tears winery and restaurant in Sighnaghi itself. Also, the Twins Wine House in Napareuli, are among the most frequently recommended for the quality of both their wine and their visitor experience.

Bodbe Monastery

The Bodbe Monastery (3km south of Sighnaghi, free entry) is one of Georgia's most important pilgrimage sites, a 9th-century monastery church containing the tomb of St. Nino, the 4th-century Christian missionary from Cappadocia who converted Georgia to Christianity in 337 AD, making Georgia one of the oldest Christian nations on earth. The monastery gardens, with their view over the Alazani plain and the Caucasus range visible across it, are among the most atmospheric religious landscapes in Georgia, and the pilgrimage tradition (the monastery receives visitors from across Georgia and from the Georgian diaspora worldwide seeking healing and blessing at St. Nino's tomb) gives it a living religious significance entirely absent from more touristic heritage sites.

Open-air museum of Sighnaghi

The open-air museum of Sighnaghi and the local history museum (in the town's main street, admission about GEL 5) give the clearest account of Kakheti's history: from the ancient Kura-Araxes culture through the Hellenistic Iberian kingdom, the medieval Georgian kingdoms, the Mongol and Timurid destructions, the Russian protectorate and the Soviet collective farm period that transformed Kakheti's wine culture into industrial production. The recovery of artisanal qvevri wine-making since Georgian independence in 1991 is one of the most remarkable cultural revivals in the post-Soviet Caucasus and is the context for the current international interest in Georgian wine.

The best time to visit Sighnaghi and Kakheti is the harvest season (mid-September to mid-October, Rtveli in Georgian) when the grape harvest brings an intense, communal agricultural and social energy to the region, the harvesting, pressing and filling of qvevri occurs simultaneously across hundreds of family wineries and the roads between villages smell of fermenting grape must for weeks. Besides, the Tbilisi-Sighnaghi marshrutka departs from Tbilisi's Samgori metro station several times daily (about GEL 8–10, 2.5 hours). A rental car gives far more flexibility for winery visits.