Kakheti in winter, when nobody comes

In July you cannot see the mountains. There is a haze over the Alazani valley from about ten in the morning and the Caucasus is a suggestion behind it.

In January you can see the snow line from the end of our street, and there is nobody else looking at it. That is the argument for coming in winter. The rest of it is arithmetic, and some of the arithmetic goes the other way.

The weather, in numbers

Telavi’s coldest month is January: an average daily high of about 3.7°C and an average low around −3.2°C. February runs a degree or so warmer. It is properly cold rather than theatrically cold, it is often clear, and the humidity in January sits around 67 per cent, which means the cold gets into you faster than the number suggests.

Snow falls in the valley and does not always stay. It stays on the mountains, which is the point. Daylight is short — dark by six, and the light goes off the valley before that.

What is genuinely better

The view. This is the whole case. The Greater Caucasus wall across the valley, white, with the vineyard rows going out to it in bare brown lines. From Nekresi’s hill on a clear February morning it is the best thing in eastern Georgia and there will be four other people up there.

The cellars are empty. A family marani in February is a fire, a table, a man with time, and nobody waiting for your seat. In August the same cellar is doing three groups a day. If you want the version of this that people write home about, come when nobody else is asking.

Alaverdi with no coaches. The eleventh-century cathedral twenty kilometres north is on every day trip out of Tbilisi, and in winter it is not. If you want to see the monastery cellar rather than just the church, ask in advance — that part has generally needed booking, and in the quiet months they have the time.

What is in the glass is settled. The qvevri filled at rtveli is still sealed under the floor; cellars open them from late spring. So what a family pours you in January is last year’s, which has had a full year to come together and is the best it will be.

Prices. The lowest of the year, everywhere, including here.

The food turns over. Winter is when Kakheti eats the half of its cooking that visitors miss: lobio in the clay pot with mchadi, khashlama in its broth, khinkali — which is mountain food and makes obvious sense at four degrees — and the pickles, which have been waiting since September. The seasonal table is here.

What is genuinely worse

Being straight about this matters more than the paragraph above.

The Gombori pass. The direct road from Tbilisi can close after snow and is controlled by the patrol police when conditions are bad. Then everybody goes round via Sagarejo, which turns a two-hour drive into closer to three. It is not a disaster. It is an hour you did not plan for, and it is the reason we would take a driver rather than a hire car between November and March. Black ice on an unlit pass with no barrier is not a road to learn Georgia on.

Tusheti is shut. Completely. The Abano pass is closed from about mid-October to about mid-June and the villages up there are cut off for the winter. Do not plan around it.

Some things close. The season is thin, restaurants keep shorter hours, and a few guest houses simply shut for two months. Check before you arrive rather than after.

The dark. You get about eight usable hours. One church, one long lunch, one cellar is a full winter day here, and trying for four things means doing the last two after sunset.

Heating is a real question in old buildings, and you should ask it of anywhere you book. Every room here has an air conditioning unit, which in Georgia is what heats a room, and the house is two hundred years old, which cuts both ways.

The three weeks that are the actual reason to come

If you can pick, come between the end of December and the middle of January, when Kakheti is entirely local and eating continuously.

New Year is the big event, considerably bigger than Christmas. The table has satsivi on it — turkey in cold walnut sauce, which is the dish of the year — and gozinaki, walnuts in honey, cut into diamonds. There is a chichilaki in the corner: a hazel branch shaved into a pale cascade of curls, decorated with dried fruit and churchkhela, standing in for a Christmas tree and considerably older than one.

Mekvle. The first person through your door on New Year’s morning sets the luck of the year, so the family chooses them in advance and they arrive with sweets. Being asked is a compliment. Turning up uninvited at seven in the morning is not.

Christmas is 7 January, on the Orthodox calendar, and the thing to see is alilo — the carolling procession through the streets, in costume.

14 January is Old New Year, which is celebrated again, properly.

19 January is Epiphany, and the chichilaki is burned the day before to take the previous year’s troubles with it.

That is three weeks of feasting, and the region is at its least commercial and its most itself.

And then the vines get cut

February and March are pruning, and the whole valley is out doing it. It is not picturesque in the way rtveli is. It is cold work with secateurs.

But this is where the loop closes, and it is our favourite fact about this region: the cuttings are gathered, dried through the spring, and burned in the summer under the mtsvadi. The embers that the pork is grilled over in July are the vines that were cut in February. Nothing here is thrown away and nothing is unconnected to the wine, including the fire.

What a winter day should look like

One thing in the morning, one long table in the afternoon, and back before dark.

Alaverdi, then lunch. Or Ikalto, which is eight kilometres out, half-ruined and empty in any season, with the qvevri mouths open to the sky among the stones — and in the frost it is a considerably stranger place than in August.

The town on foot. Batonis Tsikhe has been open 10:00–18:00, Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays, around 7 lari, with the last admission half an hour before close — worth ringing ahead in deep winter. Then the market, which does not stop, and in February is pickles, cheese, walnuts, dried fruit and not much else, which is exactly what you want to be buying.

A cellar, from one o’clock until it gets dark.

What to bring

Layers, and the assumption that indoors will be either very warm or not warm at all with no intermediate setting. Proper shoes — the mud in a February vineyard is a serious material. Something for the wind on the ridges. And nothing you would be sad to see wine on.

Who should not come in winter

If you want green vineyards, the harvest, fruit off the tree or long evenings outside, come in May or in September and do not let anybody talk you out of it.

If you want the mountains visible, the cellars empty, a table with only your party at it, and the cheapest rooms of the year, come in February. We are open all winter, breakfast comes out of the oven at eight regardless, and the rooms are heated. Ask us what a night in February costs; it is the number that surprises people most about this house.