Georgians have been making wine for eight thousand years, which they will tell you, and they make it in clay pots buried in the ground, which they will show you, and it is amber, not white, because the skins stay in, which you will taste, and then taste again, because your host has refilled the glass while you were being told about the pots.
Signagi sits on a ridge over the Alazani valley with the Caucasus along the far side like a wall someone forgot to finish. It's called the city of love, for a marriage office that's open twenty-four hours. I did not get married. I was, by the third evening, open to discussion.
The wine is the thing. Rkatsiteli, skins on, six months in a qvevri, and it tastes like apricot and walnuts and the inside of a church. Every family has a pot. Every pot has an opinion. I was fed by four families in three days and am still, I think, slightly amber.
Twelve days in Georgia. I went for the mountains. I came back for this.
