by Lindsay Moss

“It’s hard to be Georgian,” Diana, a young mother in her twenties, said to me on several occasions. And indeed, it is hard to be Georgian.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country erupted in internal and external political disputes. It’s been bombed and occupied and couped all over.  I couldn’t disagree with her statement, although I thought she was just being a little over-emotional the day I met her, as she was completely drunk. I had somehow ended up dining with her at an upscale restaurant overlooking Vake park in the wooded hills of Tbilisi. Someone in the background was playing lute and accordion, and the table was decorated in typical Georgian style: way too much food, a large family, vodka, and numerous pitchers of cloudy, honey-colored homemade wine. Not to mention the random guy at the next table periodically insisting on dispatching long, slurry toasts to us.

Diana took another tiny glass of vodka in her fingertips as the host, her father in-law, stood up once more to give a toast of his own..“To our parents,” he began. It was one of many invitations to drink and—having arrived late in the evening—I had to catch up. I was about a litre-and-a-half of wine behind the other guests, but the pitchers were emptying quickly with each “cheers”; it’s tradition to seal each little speech by downing your entire cup—or occasionally, large animal horn—of wine.

“So I’ll see you next weekend? For khinkali?” I verified. I had somehow in her inebriated state recruited her as my cooking teacher; I wanted to learn how to make my favorite Georgian food: a meat dumping that gushes with rich, salty broth upon first bite. One week later, I found myself in her mother’s Soviet block apartment amid the rather barren outskirts of the city, and as we were grinding coriander and fatty hunks of raw pork, I heard it again:

“It’s hard to be Georgian…” This was in reference to her brother’s sudden call to arms during the last South Ossetia conflict in the summer of 2008. She was deathly afraid he wouldn’t return, but now he was studying viticulture at university.

I had come to learn quickly that wine was an integral part of being Georgian, and not in the same abstract way that the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria have somehow worked themselves into our national identity. Everybody’s grandfather or dad makes wine, the recipe passing through each generation. Every bazaar boasts a collection of vendors selling their product out of giant plastic jugs or used 2-litre Coke bottles.

I started to wonder where I’d gotten off thinking that winemaking and consumption was reserved for those with a small cash reserve and an aptitude for science; the stuff in the Coke bottles is good.

And why shouldn’t it be? Georgians did, after all, invent/discover winemaking and grape cultivation nearly 8000 to 7000 years ago. Still, winemakers pride themselves on their numerous indigenous varietals, the country’s reputation in the USSR (and post-USSR) as the best wine producers in the region (which Stalin attested to on numerous occasions), and the long tradition of “Georgian technology” winemaking.

“Georgian wine is alive,” a tour guide in Kakheti once poeticized in the country’s most famous and productive region of winemaking, a valley below the towering, snow-capped peaks of the South Caucasus. He was referring to the raw nutrients of the grapes and their biproducts present in the final, non-filtered product. The traditional “Georgian technology” process goes something like this: You get a big amphora, bury it in the ground, seal in your grape juice and skins with layers of mud and sand and glass, and then let it ferment a few months. Though the process has worked well for a few millennia now, most of Grandpa’s tasty “bathtub” wine is made in glass jars and small tanks in his garage or tool shed—only a few die-hards make it the traditional way.

Diana’s brother, meanwhile, is studying European technology of viticulture, and there is never a shortage of jobs on the market, although business slowed when Russia placed an embargo on their wines. Luckily there’s demand elsewhere and from within—it was common to witness a single person taking down several litres themselves in one evening.

“How many Americans do you know who can drink three litres of wine in one night?” Diana’s brother asked.

“Not many,” I answered. This wasn’t the first time this question had been posed.