Kakheti Wine Region: Villages, Vineyards and Georgia’s Eastern Wine Route

East of Tbilisi, where the Alazani River cuts a wide, fertile valley beneath the Caucasus Mountains, lies Kakheti — Georgia’s oldest and largest wine-growing region, producing the majority of the country’s wine from soils that have supported vineyards for millennia. The valley’s market towns and fortified hilltops carry that history in their stonework as much as in their cellars. On the Small Group Tour to the Caucasus, Odyssey Traveller’s route from Baku to Yerevan crosses the border from Azerbaijan directly into Kakheti’s heartland, giving travellers two full days among its vineyards, churches and walled towns before continuing on to Tbilisi. This is the ground that leg covers: Telavi’s markets and bakeries, the royal ruins of Gremi, the fortified town of Sighnaghi, and a lunch stop at a family-run wine cellar.

Crossing into Georgia’s Wine Country

Kakheti sits along the Alazani and Iori rivers, in the shelter of the Greater Caucasus to the north and the lower Gombori range to the west. Grapes have been grown here since well before written history, and the region still accounts for the large majority of Georgia’s wine production today, spread across small family plots as much as commercial vineyards. Two grape varieties dominate the landscape: Rkatsiteli, a white grape prized for its high acidity and citrus character, and Saperavi, a deeply coloured red with the tannin and structure to age for decades. Mtsvane, an aromatic white often blended with Rkatsiteli, fills out the picture. Wine here is less a product than a form of hospitality — woven into meals, toasts and the rhythm of the villages the tour passes through.

For a fuller picture of the country before you travel — its history, geography and the shape of a first visit — Odyssey Traveller’s guide to discovering Georgia is a useful starting point.

Telavi: Bread, Churchkhela and the Region’s Old Capital

Telavi has been Kakheti’s principal town since the 17th century, when the Kingdom of Kakheti moved its capital here after Gremi was destroyed. It is a working regional centre rather than a museum piece: a statue of King Erekle II watches over the main square, and a plane tree estimated at more than 900 years old still shades one corner of town. The tour arrives here after crossing the Georgian border from Sheki, and the evening is spent learning two of the region’s everyday crafts: traditional bread baking and the making of churchkhela, strings of walnuts dipped repeatedly in thickened, spiced grape must (tatara) until they set into a firm, chewy sweet.

What is churchkhela, and where can you see it made in Telavi?

Churchkhela is walnuts threaded on string and dipped several times into boiled, spiced grape juice thickened with flour, then hung to dry until the coating sets into a firm, dark, jelly-like layer — sometimes called “Georgian Snickers” for its rough resemblance in shape. In Telavi, the group watches a local household demonstrate the process as part of the evening arrival, alongside traditional bread baking, before dinner at the guesthouse.

Gremi: The Ruined Capital of the Kakhetian Kings

Before Telavi, Kakheti’s capital was Gremi, a fortified royal town founded by King Levan of Kakheti in the 16th century. At its peak it covered around 40 hectares and functioned as a stop on the Silk Road as well as a royal seat, with a palace, a bustling commercial quarter and the Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, built between 1565 and 1577. In 1615 the town was destroyed by the armies of the Persian Shah Abbas I, who spared the church but razed the rest of the settlement; Gremi never recovered its former standing, and the Kakhetian kings relocated to Telavi. What survives today is the hilltop citadel complex — the domed church, a bell tower that now houses a small museum of archaeological finds, and the remnants of the defensive walls that once enclosed the town, with sweeping views across the Alazani Valley from the tower platform.

Sighnaghi: The Walled Town on the Alazani Ridge

From Gremi, the road climbs to Sighnaghi, a hilltop town built as a single defensive project rather than a settlement that grew organically. In 1762, King Erekle II ordered the town fortified against raids from across the mountains to the north, and the resulting wall — roughly four kilometres of it, with 23 towers, each named for the village whose residents were meant to shelter there in times of danger — still nearly encircles the old town today. The fortifications lost their military purpose once Georgia came under Russian control in the early 19th century, and Sighnaghi has since become known, more romantically, as Georgia’s “City of Love,” its pastel houses and balconied lanes drawing couples and day-trippers from Tbilisi. The tour’s stop here takes in the Royal Town within the walls and the Sighnaghi Historical and Ethnographical Museum, with the Alazani Valley and the Caucasus foothills laid out below.

How much walking does the Sighnaghi visit involve?

Expect an hour or so of walking on cobbled streets and along sections of the old wall, with some gentle inclines but no serious climbing. Sighnaghi sits on a hilltop, so the streets slope, and the wall itself is uneven underfoot in places — comfortable, supportive shoes make a real difference here, as they do across the tour’s Level 2 (Moderate) activity rating.

A Wine Cellar Lunch in the Kakhetian Tradition

Between Signagi and Tbilisi, the tour stops for lunch at a local Georgian wine cellar — a working marani, built around the same buried clay qvevri vessels described in our guide to Georgian wine and qvevri, rather than a tourist tasting room, where the meal follows the shape of a Kakhetian supra. Dishes arrive in waves rather than courses: fresh khachapuri, walnut-stuffed vegetables, grilled meats and whatever the season provides, alongside the cellar’s own Rkatsiteli and Saperavi. A supra traditionally runs on a series of toasts led by a tamada, or toastmaster, moving from guests and hosts through to family, friends and, eventually, more reflective subjects — a structure that turns a meal into something closer to a shared performance than a simple lunch stop.

Is the wine cellar lunch included in the tour, or is it optional?

It’s included as a standard part of the itinerary, on the day the group travels from Telavi and Signagi through to Tbilisi. No separate booking or additional payment is needed on the day — it’s built into the tour’s meal inclusions alongside the rest of the day’s breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Kakheti’s Grapes and What to Look For in a Glass

Rkatsiteli, Kakheti’s signature white, is one of the oldest cultivated grape varieties still in wide use, producing wines with a firm, citrus-driven acidity and notes of green apple; it forms the backbone of well-known regional labels and is also the grape most Kakhetian households use for their own home-made wine. Saperavi, the region’s leading red, is a teinturier variety — meaning the flesh as well as the skin carries colour — giving wines a deep, almost opaque colour, dark-fruit and spice flavours, and enough structure to reward some years in the bottle. Mtsvane, less widely exported but a fixture of local tables, adds floral, stone-fruit notes and is often blended with Rkatsiteli for a softer, rounder white. Between the vineyards, the family cellars and the tour’s own wine cellar lunch, Kakheti offers more chances to taste these varieties as they’re actually drunk at home than most single tastings ever could.

Planning Your Visit to Kakheti

Odyssey’s Caucasus tour departs in May and October, and the two months show Kakheti quite differently. May finds the vineyards in full leaf, the Alazani Valley green, and the countryside around Telavi and Sighnaghi at its most comfortable for walking. October departures run closer to rtveli, the grape harvest, when cellars across the region are at their busiest and most local celebrations of the new vintage take place — though exact harvest timing shifts from year to year with the weather, so it’s worth checking current departure dates rather than assuming an October visit will coincide precisely.

Can solo travellers join the Kakheti leg comfortably?

Yes — solo travellers are a regular part of these small groups, and Kakheti’s shared meals and wine cellar lunch, in particular, make for an easy way to fall into conversation with the rest of the group. Single room supplements apply for those who prefer their own room rather than twin-share, and this is worth discussing with a Tour Specialist when booking.

From Sighnaghi, the tour’s route turns west toward Tbilisi, trading Kakheti’s vineyards for the old town’s churches, bathhouses and museums — one stage in a longer arc through Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan that we cover in full in our Caucasus itinerary for mature travellers. Few wine regions let you eat and drink so directly with the people who make it, in villages that have been doing exactly this, in more or less this way, for a very long time.