Georgia: Sustainable Vacation in Alazani Valley – Travel


This setting could also be somewhere on the outskirts of Berlin: old stone buildings with glass, light-catching additions, colorful hammocks, light bulb garlands, summer kitchen, deck chairs. You sit on a wooden terrace with a view of the landscape, which is definitely more hilly than the surrounding area of ​​Berlin. On one side you can see a small valley with fruit trees and a stone church, on the other the view goes over the wide Alazani valley to the still snow-covered mountains of the Greater Caucasus.

“We have brought life back to a dilapidated homestead here and wanted to preserve as much of the old substance as possible,” says Ia Tabagari and pours a Rkatsiteli Rosé, a natural wine of course, plus aubergines filled with walnut paste, local cheeses and salty -smoky pork skewers. “For the women from the village who cook and clean here, it is often the first job outside of their home, they are pretty happy.” You also buy meat, milk and vegetables from local farmers. “I encouraged them to register as small business owners,” said Tabagari. This is quick and easy in Georgia. All of this has worked very well since the hotel opened in 2019, tourism ran like clockwork – until the pandemic hit the brakes. For more than a year now, almost no foreign tourists have come.

Hip and cozy: the café on the grounds of the Lost Ridge Inn, which was once a farm.

(Photo: Lost Ridge Inn)

But Ia Tabagari, an energetic woman in her mid-50s, doesn’t let that discourage her. She is one of the most famous tourism entrepreneurs in Georgia, chairwoman of the Association of Tour Operators, with her association “Women for future” she supports young entrepreneurs. About ten years ago she began to develop wine tourism in Georgia, which up until then had not existed in this oldest wine-growing country on earth. “That’s why they laughed at us back then, today there are wine tastings and overnight accommodations on every corner,” says Tabagari. “And now I’m trying to develop equestrian tourism.”

The Lost Ridge Inn is not only a guesthouse with nine tastefully furnished rooms, a café and a restaurant with a craft beer brewery, but above all a ranch. Cabardines and other Caucasian horses, which are elegant and particularly suitable for the mountains, graze in the meadows around the hotel. Tabagari has hired two horse professionals who are now developing the herd of twelve and training them for multi-day tours in the Caucasus or day trips to nearby nature reserves.

Georgia is a good country for horse riding because there is a lot of nature, like here in Kakheti.

(Photo: Lost Ridge Inn)

And because Ia Tabagari had an unerring instinct for the developments in tourism up to now, her plan could work out, with which she relies even more on nature-based, ecologically and socially oriented tourism. “In Georgia, tourism has grown too quickly in recent years, and the quality has suffered as a result,” says Tabagari. With her own tour operator, who offers wine and cultural tours, she had offered 120 tours in 2019, and there should be 200 in 2020. But then Corona came. “After the pandemic, tourism will change: smaller groups, more individual tourists, more families.” She is already noticing this because many families from Tbilisi come to the Lost Ridge Inn for long weekends, including many foreigners who live in the capital. For the coming summer she is hoping for vaccinated tourists from Europe and Israel who will be allowed to enter without restrictions.

Georgia, hotel

Tastefully furnished: room in the Lost Ridge Inn.

(Photo: Hans Gasser)

Tabagari’s guest house is not far from the pretty town of Sighnaghi, which has developed into one of the centers of Georgian wine tourism in recent years. There are cobbled streets here, lots of hotels and restaurants that are pretty empty at the moment. Georgia is slowly emerging from the third wave, which started later here than in Europe. Because there is hardly any government support, more and more companies have to give up. Tabagari has moved here with some of her employees from the Tbilisi office since the beginning of the pandemic. “You are freer here than in the city,” she says.

Shota Logazidze has been this conviction for a long time. The giant, more than two meters tall, wears a hipster beard and a lumberjack shirt and brews the beer at the Lost Ridge Inn. He moved with his wife and children from Tbilisi to the wine town of Telavi five years ago. “I noticed: I hate the city,” he says in the best of English. He bought 5000 square meters of vineyards for little money and taught himself how to make wine together with a friend. “We drank 500 of the first 900 bottles of Rkatsiteli ourselves,” he says and grins. Today there are 3,000 bottles of natural wine, most of which are exported. “The export saved us in the pandemic year,” says Logazidze and taps a wheat beer he has brewed directly from the steel tank, which tastes hoppy and slightly bitter.

Georgia, hotel

He wants to teach the Georgians to drink craft beer: Shota Logazidze, brewer and winemaker.

(Photo: Hans Gasser)

The fact that he has now also become a good brewer is also due to Ia Tabagari, who recognized his technical skills. After a few brewery courses in the USA, he taught himself the rest: “Following the principle of trial and error. A lot of error.” Now he brews great tasting IPAs, Belgian Blonde, wheat and even Trappist beers. “Georgians are used to the Czech industrial beer,” says the 31-year-old, “it takes time to re-educate them in terms of taste.”

The kettles are steaming, there is a smell of barley and hops, which mixes with the scent of the pork skewers that are grilled in the summer kitchen next door. Shota also helps with the grill and tells about the fact that he is also currently working on opening a bakery in his village, organic bread with wild yeast, he has already planted a wheat field. “As a result of the pandemic, many young Georgians moved back to the countryside to make wine or grow vegetables. But there are still too few.” Georgia is known for its excellent agricultural products, but most of the food is imported because it is cheaper. That is currently changing, but there is still a lot of land lying fallow because more than a third of all residents live in Tbilisi.

Georgians are suffering severely from the pandemic, many have lost their jobs and are therefore having to look for other employment opportunities. “As a result, the country is developing more strongly again,” says Ia Tabagari with conviction. In the neighboring village, a young man had started making cheeses the European way, he could hardly keep up with the production; young women who have studied in Tbilisi or abroad press wine in the Quevri clay amphoras, just as their ancestors did, such as Natia Gurjashvili from the neighboring village of Tibani.

Brightly lit: Summer night party in the garden of the Lost Ridge Inn.

(Photo: Nick Kachibaia / Lost Ridge Inn)

And so in the evening you sit on the beautiful terrace with a view of the snow mountains of Dagestan, drink craft beer and natural wine, eat walnuts and the really good cheese, refined with Saperavi red wine. A mild evening wind blows over the hills, horses graze, sheep bleat. Hopefully it will be this type of tourism that will prevail after the pandemic.

Information:

Entry: Georgia is considered a normal risk area, for entry you need a PCR test that is no more than 72 hours old or proof of vaccination. On the third day in the country you have to test again.

Getting there: E.g. with Lufthansa from Munich to Tbilisi, flight time four hours, approx. 400 euros, lufthansa.com

Accommodation: Lost Ridge Inn, double room with FS for the equivalent of 48 euros, lostridgeinn.com

Travel arrangement: The Munich tour operator Xenostours offers cultural tours to Georgia, xenostours.de

Winemakers and brewers Shota Logazidze: @LagaziWineCellar

Further information: georgia.travel

Note

The research trip for this article was partly supported by tour operators, hotels, airlines and / or tourism agencies.

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