The Possible Birthplace of Wine and Definite Birthplace of Stalin

THE PEOPLE OF Georgia might well be the first folks who ever got properly wine-drunk.

- Hunt Beaty

Straddling the Promethean Caucasus mountains, wedged between both Black and Caspian seas, Georgia is a cultural crossroads between Europe and Asia. Its fertile valleys and slopes yielded the oldest archaeological evidence of wine production currently on record. During my short yet delightfully buzzed visit last fall, it was apparent that they've only gotten better at both the making and the drinking. Georgian winemaking traditions are hard won; in the Soviet era, many indigenous grape varieties were lost to brutish demands for quantity, not quality. Some families preserved precious varieties in secret.

I saw this heady spirit in the small town of Kachreti at the Burjanadze family home. At a traditional supra (banquet), my host and tomada (toastmaster) poured glass after glass of his own inky red Saperavi, each after a heartfelt toast, before bursting into a polyphonic song alongside his father. The wine came from a qvevri, a traditional clay pot submerged in his backyard, and the bottle’s label was stamped with his family's fingerprints, several of whom shared the table and the cherished moment.

Georgia also gave the world one of the 20th century's worst tyrants, Josef Stalin. Born in Gori, west of capital city Tbilisi, Stalin's dark shadow lingers. Venture across the Kura River a few miles outside the city center and find yourself down a dank underground museum where a young revolutionary Stalin printed secret pamphlets during the Bolshevik Revolution. A charming yet perhaps contextually overeager docent asks you to sign a guest book scattered among USSR memorabilia.