I Accidentally Climbed the Caucasus Mountains

After a much better night of sleep in our new, cushy hotel, KMac and I were up and ready for a tour of the Kakheti region. We'd arranged with the hotel to use their car (and driver) to see some of the sights. We really hoped they'd told him the places we suggested because he spoke no English, we obviously no Georgian, and my Russian is not only crap, it's become some sort of weird Russo-Serbian mutant.

After driving for about an hour we pulled up to the Khareba winery. It wasn't on our list but as far as I'm concerned, a wine tasting is an auspicious way to start out any tour! Khareba is one of the country's largest producers. Don't mistake size for quality though. The wine was fine, I've certainly had much worse, but it's not special.We really enjoyed the tour though and bought a couple bottles to take back to the hotel along with a few bottles of locally pressed grape seed oil.

Before we knew how bad it was going to be

Back on the road we drove closer and closer to the Caucasus Mountains. It wasn't too long before our driver gestured at a structure at the top of one of the peeks. "Monastery" he said to which we made agreeing noises. Monasteries were on our list so we were feeling pretty good about this as long, I joked to KMac, as we didn't have to walk up the bloody mountain to get there.

Me and my big mouth. Our driver dropped us off at the base and told us (in Russian) that he'd wait over there for us. Exchanging trepedacious looks, KMac and I got out. We walked around a small parking lot area not really knowing what to do and started following the road up the mountain. Why pave a nice road if they weren't going to allow vehicles?

The Nekresi Monastery

Qvevri still in the ground from the monastery's wine making

We walked for about 20 minutes and stopped for a breather, a long one, and to assess if we wanted to keep going or not. Then we heard an engine and saw a tour bus as it drove down the mountain. No private cars allowed but tour buses were? A good excuse for a long breather we looked up the Nekresi Monastery on TripAdvisor and learned that apparently there were buses which (for a small fee) would drive you up and down the mountain. Sigh. Now we had another decision to make; walk down and get the bus (which apparently only runs when full) or keep going. We pushed on.

A few minutes, and our next breather later, we ran across a group of German-speaking tourists coming down. KMac asked if we had much farther to go and after laughing they told we weren't even half way yet. Not even half way?! I was terrified. I was going to die. My heart was going to explode and I was going to die; but for some reason we decided to keep going!

So onward we trudged. Each time we came to another sharp bend in the road I prayed that we were at the peek and each time I was disappointed. Finally many, many breathers-and about an hour later-we reached the Nekresi Monastery. Was it worth it? Eh.

The views were stunning and the buildings all still in very good repair but I wouldn't have climbed a mountain for that. If you go, be aware that to the right of the entrance is a small booth that sells tickets for the mini bus. Take the mini bus.

Gremi Castle and church

A little afraid that our driver might have given us up for dead, we caught the bus down slightly afraid of what our next stop might be. We arrived at Gremi Castle which was both on our list and mercifully set on only a small hill. A small but nice complex, Gremi includes a large church and adjacent "castle" slash tower which is now a museum.

Church from the tower

In the museum, also small but nice, we had the pleasure of getting a bot of a guided tour of local history from one of the workers who spoke excellent English. After our tour we climbed up into the tower, which wasn't nearly as stair-scary as I thought it would be, in order to take in the amazing views. There are not enough songs to Georgia's beauty; it's a stunning country.

Back in the car and a short drive later we arrived at the Alaverdi Monastery. Also on our list I was hoping we could kill two birds with one stone here: a church for KMac and wine tasting for me. I'd read a lot about the wines coming out of Alaverdi Monastery and was hoping to try them. We got the church but weren't able to do a wine tasting. For which I would later be glad.

The church at the monastery is huge. We sneaked quietly into the back as there was a liturgy on but I didn't stay long. Incense + me = insta-migraine.

The last stop on our tour was the Alexander Chavchavadze museum in Tsinandali. This one did include a wine tasting! The museum is definitely worth a visit to see the house if nothing else. We were also lucky enough to be there for a temporary exhibition by an Italian artist who repurposes old wine barrels to make furniture, art, toys, etc. That was really cool and now I need to build a special wine room in my future home to house not only my future wine collection but also furniture made out of old barrels.

The drive back to Sighnaghi was particularly painful for me. I'd hoped that the car sickness during the original drive up could be attributed to all that wine and no food I'd had that day; sadly no. I wanted to die. When we finally got back to Sighnaghi and I got a few deep breaths of the clear, high elevation air I was good to go.

For dinner that evening we tracked down Okro's Winery (it's hidden up behind the Hotel Signagi) where we had a nice tour and tasting from one of the family members and stayed for dinner. We tried four of Okro's wines but my hands down favorite was their Mtsvane. We even didn't hate their chacha. Unlike most distilleries, Okro's makes theirs from wine instead of pressing the must left after pressing grapes for wine.

Even though our day was a little more adventurous than I'd planned it was a good day and a great way to remember Kakheti before heading back to Tbilisi.

Kakheti, Georgia - More Adventure Than I Wanted Part 1

In September I went on an amazing* trip to Georgia with my friend KMac and somehow totally forgot to write about it!

We arrived in Tbilisi separately, and quite late; me at around midnight and KMac at about 3 AM. Just as the flight attendants were giving everyone the death glare to turn off their phones on my flight I received a message from KMac saying "Don't take a cab! You'll be met at the airport!". And sure enough, after waiting what felt like an hour for my bag I entered the arrivals terminal where I was greeted by a Georgian Orthodox priest.

That was definitely a first for me.

We would see a lot of Father N. during this trip but for the time being I was grateful for the lift.

After a good sleep in, KMac and I stretched our legs on Rustaveli Avenue on our way to meet the team behind Exotic Wine Travels. We'd connected through social media and it turned out we were going to be in Tbilisi at the same time; me just starting to learn about Georgian wines and them promoting their fantastic book, Uncorking the Caucasus.

We met them at Vino Underground, a great wine bar owned by a group of Georgia's leading natural wine makers where we proceeded to enjoy three, or was it four? amazing bottles of Georgian wine. Unfortunately between then and catching our ride with Father N to Sighnaghi, neither KMac nor I had time to eat. Combine that with major car sickness from the windy mountainous drive and I wanted to die. I don't think I've been that car sick since the drive from Sarajevo to Belgrade.

It was late when we finally made it to our guesthouse and we were ready to sleep. I had booked us rooms at the most highly rated guesthouse (the most common type of accommodation outside Tbilisi) in Sighnaghi-David Zandrashvili's Guesthouse. We knew we weren't in for five start treatment but we were a little shocked by what we found. To start, apparently there was a 10 PM curfew that wasn't listed in the house rules online. That curfew would explain why the guesthouse, at capacity, was practically shaking with the loud music, singing, and stomp-dancing of other guests. I settled into room while KMac was shown to hers: downstairs, through the common room, through the dining room, through the kitchen, then outside again, down some unlit stairs that had no handrail, and into another building.

Sighnaghi

Streets of Sighnaghi

Five minutes later I got a message from KMac: "There's a huge spider in my room! I tried to kill it but it got away!" Not a fan of spiders myself I told her that if she wanted, she was welcome in my (assumingly) spider-free room. No, no, she assured me; but several minutes later I got another message: "Now there's another, completely different spider. I'm on my way!" Between the noise of other guests, paper thin walls, and the loud, creaky bed it was hours before we were able to get to sleep.

We were up early the next morning with two missions: attend orthodox liturgy since there are no Catholic churches in Sighnaghi, and find a new hotel. Luckily we were successful in both endeavors and in the afternoon dragged our suitcases up the hill to the posh, and pricey hotel spa where we stayed three years ago. What a difference.

Sighnaghi city walls

View of Sighnaghi from our hotel

Happily ensconced in our new hotel, and after a brief rest to make up for all the sleep we missed the night before, we headed out to find two of the most important things you could ever want in Georgia: food and wine. For dinner we headed to a restaurant called Wine World. You call a restaurant 'Wine World' and there are certain assumptions, right? As in, lots of wine. No. There were three house wines: red, white, and green. We went with the green which wasn't too bad as long as we thought of it as ice tea instead of wine. The food was killer though. We had mtsvade (grilled pork and onions), lobiani (bread stuffed with slow cooked beans), eggplant with walnut garlic paste, and sulguni cheese stuffed mushrooms baked in a clay dish. So don't go to Wine World for the wine but it's worth it for the food.
 

We bought a bottle of wine to take back to our hotel and drank it on the hotel sky terrace playing with the astrology star app on KMac's phone. Then it was time for bed to rest up for our tour of Kakheti the next day-a tour that included us accidentally climbing a mountain!



*All trips to Georgia would be amazing but traveling with KMac comes with extra experiences; but more on that later!

Istanbul Photowalk: Yedikule and Samatya

A couple weeks ago M and I went on another great photowalk with the Istanbul Language Exchange Club. It was unfortunately a very overcast day but that did not stop our enjoyment!

Ruins of a Byzantine hamam

Yedikule

I was particularly excited about this walk because, while I've driven by Yedikule a million times I've never actually been. Built in 1458, Yedikule, which means 'seven towers' in Turkish, takes up a corner of the old Byzantine wall and was used as a fortress, prison, and site of frequent executions. Now it's a park. It's totally where you want to have a picnic.

 

While bits and pieces of the fort have been restored, like much of the old wall, you can still see some of the original Greek inscriptions and Roman carvings. Near the fortress there is one city gate in particular through which only Roman soldiers were allowed to pass.

From Yedikule, which is near the Bosphorus, we walked farther inland roving through the small, mostly residential streets on our way to Samatya. Like a lot of Istanbul, the houses are a mix of collapsing buildings that were probably at one time amazing and ugly block buildings with the occasional hidden gem tucked away.

Samatya was a lot like those occasional gems-a small, charming neighborhood tucked into a grey, dirty big city. With colorful buildings, lively squares, relaxing cafes, and some of the city's best fish restaurants this neighborhood is worth the trouble of deeper exploration.

As we made our way towards Aksaray we stopped in one of the (surprisingly) many Armenian churches. This one, hidden in a courtyard behind high walls like most of Istanbul's Christian churches, used to be the Armenian Patriarchate. At first our group wasn't even allowed through the gate-we were told that we would scare the children (?!) but they changed their minds and allowed us in. Then after giving us permission to take pictures we were kicked out for taking pictures.

The Sultan's box up on the left

After a less than successful visit there we headed to one of Istanbul's Imperial Mosques which was a much friendlier place. Sadly somehow every single one of the pictures I took inside is blurry. They look like I was snapping the picture and spinning in circles at the same time.

Our last stop was another mosque. Not an imperial mosque this time, a brand new one-so new even that it's still not open. I have never seen a modern mosque like this one and while I think Istanbul has a few too many already, this one is a piece of modern architectural art that I wish were in a more easily accessible part of the city so that more people could appreciate it.

So another great walk during which we got to explore parts of the city we would otherwise never have seen!

Turkish Wine of the Week - Visiting Edirne and the Arda Winery

Happily day two in Edirne was only about 35-36 C and not 38 because we had to bundle up several times to visit some more mosques.We started the day at the Eski Camii (Old Mosque) located just down the street from the Selimiye Mosque.

This is possibly the most uniquely decorated mosque I've ever visited. Rather than tiles or frescoes, the Old Mosque, completed in 1414, is almost stark of decoration except for the giant Arabic calligraphy inscriptions that dominate the walls and pillars.

After a morning wandering around the Old Mosque and the arasta (bazaar) we headed back to our hotel to check out. We stayed at the Ottoman Palace Hotel which is situated pretty centrally in Edirne. A perfectly decent hotel for the ridiculously low price (about $30/night for a large single) and the owners were very friendly. I'd stored a couple bottles of wine in their refrigerator which sparked a conversation with the owner about Turkish wines. As we were leaving he gave me a bottle of wine that his family makes for themselves!

From our hotel we headed down the street to the Üç Şerefeli Camii (Mosque of the Three Balconies). This stunning mosque, completed in 1447, was impressive even before we got into the courtyard. From outside the wall we could see that not only were the minarets decorated, they were all done in different styles.

Inside was equally lovely with soaring domes and lots of light and space. What I particularly liked was how no space was too small to decorate. Even the inside of the small domes are beautifully decorated. As sad as it is to see the country so devoid of tourists the selfish side of me enjoys it when I can walk into a mosque, museum, church, etc and not have a ton of people in my photos!

In an effort to cover all the major religions in one day, we left this mosque in search of Edirne's Great Synagogue-of which I have no pictures because we got there to find the tall gates closed and locked. I spoke to the group of guards and we discovered that the synagogue was closed only that day. Argh! E&M tried to convince them to let us take a sneak peek but they weren't falling for it. So if you visit Edirne and want to see the Great Synagogue, don't go on a Monday!

We tried out luck next with the Christians of Edirne and drove through some narrow, tricky streets to try to find the Bulgarian church of Sveti Georgi (and don't think there weren't jokes around a mispronunciation of sveti). We got there, after successfully parallel parking no less, only to discover another closed gate-this one topped with razor wire. This was apparently not to be our day of being inclusively religious.

 

After our disappointments at the synagogue and church we were ready for some good luck which we found at one of my favorite wineries, the Edirne-based boutique winery Arda. Easily spotted from the road, the Arda winery-recognizable from the labels-sits on a vine covered hill that rises above the road. We drove through the vineyard and were slightly taken aback to find a large backhoe digging out the earth along the back wall of the winery. Sadly Arda was having a problem with damp and while the naturally well-irrigated soils are great for the vines, they weren't doing so much for the winery and its contents.

We had a great visit there, fully making up for the day's earlier failures. We met Yavuz who told us how his family got started in the wine business and about the wins they are currently producing. While I asked all my usual wine questions (root stock, irrigation, harvest, barrel ageing etc) we sampled a wide range of the wines. Arda produces three levels of wine: 

• Sekiz Dokuz: This, their low-end wine is named after the 8/9 rhythm of Gypsy music and is usually sold in bulk for banquets and large events
• Kuşlar: This mid-priced wines cover a large number of varietals including: Narince, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, and Cabernet-Merlot blend and are among the best mid-priced wines you can get. The Cabernet is one of my go-to wines and even for a non Syrah fan like me, the Shiraz isn't bad. 
• Reserve: These higher priced wines are well worth the buck (or TL I suppose), especially if you can buy them at the winery where they're far more reasonably priced. The reserve line includes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet-Merlot blend, and Shiraz

Of course I wasn't going to waste the opportunity to buy wine at the winery price; especially since there were several wines there that I haven't seen in Istanbul. I also snagged two of their last four bottles of Narince! Arda is not widely available even in Istanbul but you can find them at Solera (Beyoglu-Yeni Carsi Cd.) and at the wine/whiskey store in Karakoy I can never remember the name of. Helpful I know but it's somewhere near the iskele and offers significantly lower prices.


Arda 2013 Narince: A brilliant, pale yellow in the glass with a very floral, plumeria, and pineapple nose. On the palate it was creamy giving evidence to time spent in oak with bursting flavors of white pineapple, citrus, and white flowers. I'm so sorry that I only bought two bottle of the Narince because it was gorgeous-easily the nicest Narince I've had. And to the sadness of everyone at my Arda tasting, the second bottle was corked. There were tears.

The Cabernet I have reviewed before (see the link referenced above) so I won't rehash that here other than to say it's a lovely medium-bodied Cabernet with a lot of red berry, particularly raspberry flavors.

Arda 2013 Reserve Cabernet-Merlot blend: This has only recently been released and, at the time of our visit, wasn't yet available in Istanbul. You should be on the look out for it though because even for a Merlot naysayer like myself this 50/50 blend was beautiful. Eighteen months in oak (and three in the bottle) and limited filtration gives this blend a beautiful dark garnet color and adds some fascinating oak characteristics without stripping the berry flavors. The nose is redolent with pine forest, forest fruits, chocolate, and clove. In the mouth the tannins are soft and silky and with the black fruit, vanilla, and mocha flavors give a luscious drinking experience.

 

Arda 2012 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon: This one is so beautiful it gets its own picture which I took ages ago when M grilled steaks the size of our heads. Cabernet Sauvignon is often a wine that wants meat and Arda's reserve is no different.

Arda took the Mondus Vini Silver with this wine in the 16th Grand International Wine Awards, and it was well deserved. In the glass it's an intense, beautiful, purple red. The 18 months it spent in oak was obvious right from nose as the tart, dark fruit aromas were accompanied by chocolate and cinnamon. In the mouth the tannins are velvety and long like the finish. A really long finish that just kept going carrying with it the flavors from the nose: bilberry, chocolate, and cinnamon.

Side note: I had to Google bilberry because I've never had one. I was tasting blueberry but not really blueberry and it turns out that the bilberry is a wild, European cousin of the blueberry more similar in flavor to the American huckleberry (which I've also never had so that wasn't all that helpful).

So Arda; beautiful wines made with care and dedication and absolutely worth the effort to track down if you're not near Edirne.