This is part of Reason's 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
The people of Georgia might well be the first folks who ever got properly wine-drunk.
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.
