The last time I had seen Ramaz Nikoladze he was rolling a cigarette outside of a limestone cave in the Loire. Wearing a wool snood and capelet — traditional Georgian garb — he looked like a character out of Lord of the Rings. But as he drove up with his wife in a cloud of Kartli dust, he was all summery. He emerged from his car wearing a Mao worker-type of billed cap and a T-shirt that said “Nul n’est censé ignorer la Loire” (Do not ignore the Loire). I thought that could easily be said about Georgia.
I first met Ramaz as part of the initial natural wine gang of friends — Niki, John, Iago, Soliko — at the Qvevri Symposium. Years back, he and Soliko had started that natural wine SWAT team, hunting down nubile, home winemaking talent to convince them to bottle their wines, even if only a few cases. He is also one of the more visible partners at Ghvino Underground and often is manning the bar, commuting between Tbilisi and his vines.
We headed toward the wetter, more humid region of Imereti, once again zooming westward through the Rikoti tunnel. Some say that long stretch of halogen-lit tube was the only worthwhile project left over from the Soviets. At the other end was a dramatic transformation from the bleached and dry into the green and wet. My hair started to curl from the humidity.
I waited for the signals along the way — first the peasants selling foraged fruit, vegetables, occasionally heavenly chanterelles, and Caesar mushrooms. But this was June, the season of cherry paradise. As we pushed west we came to the town that specialized in boat-shaped flat sweet bread. Then came the potters. “So what’s Archil’s land like?” I asked Ramaz.
“Wait. Wait. You’ll see,” he said to me.
The road we took off the main highway was very much like an overgrown mountain road in California; I almost expected to see coppery madrona trees. Instead it was awash in cherry, mulberry, and pomegranate. A lank, sandy-haired man, Archil, was waiting for us with expectation.
Archil Guriava looked like a pale math student despite the fact that he worked long and hard in the sun. Wasting no time, he guided us along a pastoral lane behind his house, underneath mulberry trees with their tubular, beaded fruit hanging from their branches like tiny Christmas ornaments. This rural landscape was typical, cut up into small plots from the original Soviet rationing. It was the first of many vineyards where I’d see the multipurpose approach. I had read about old-fashioned plots, especially in southern Italy, were one small section of land was used to grow everything. In France the idea of growing corn on the same ground where vines grew was considered absurd — the conventional wisdom was that they were incompatible — but in Georgia, especially in the west, it was a thriving tradition. All of these plots were secured behind a sometimes spindly wire gate. Proudly Archil unhooked his. His vines were trellised high, close to pergola height. I started to stomp on the ground, definitely, loudly.
“What are you doing?” asked Ramaz.
“In case there are vipers,” I confessed. I hadn’t seen one, but from what I’d heard, there were vipers all over the vines. In the spring they mate, and if they’re disturbed by chance, they cause trouble. Sometimes they’re not only in the vineyard. Gela told a story about walking into his winery and having a viper, resting on the lintel, fall on his neck when he opened the door. He flicked it off quickly and then cut its head off with the wine tool in his hand.
“There aren’t vipers in the west, and so there are none in Imereti,” Ramaz said, as Archil looked on, wondering what we were talking about. I was relieved and went back to indulging in the beauty with peace.
The wine Archil is most known for is the meaty local red variety from the Otskhanuri Sapere vines. In June these looked like bunched plump figs — or, in vine terms, the berries hang in a loose formation as if the fruit of a wild vine. And underneath were the other vines — potatoes, tomatoes, peas, and beans. They all grew in the mustard-colored soil.
Archil knelt down, grabbed something, then opened his fist to show me a rock the color of a yellowed bone. Embedded in it were mini shells and ancient chalky crustaceans. “Ah,” I said, “that’s why the soil is such an ochre color.” The red terra-cotta soil was mixed with the white and yellow limestone fossils. More to the point was that limestone mixed in with clay is the benchmark of all great soils. For lands such as Piedmont and Burgundy, it was a key factor in glorious wine.
Not only was the soil intoxicating, the air was too. I stood up, bent my head back, and inhaled the hills, the sounds, and the perfume. I was heady with the sensuality of it all. Knit into the insects and birds were the grapes, peaches, plums, apricots, shade, and sun — a thriving sexual frenzy of fertility. Summer was about to burst. Everything was in balance in a robust ecosystem. I thought about all the world’s winemakers trying to study biodiversity; they were busy with co-planting beneficial herbs, flowers, and clovers in the vineyards. But here it was in this vineyard, with no architect trying to design it.
People talk of biodynamics; they take inspiration from that kind of homeopathic farming. They pay homage to its father, Rudolf Steiner. To hell with it, I thought. I was in a completely different thought zone, and I was heading for a rant of a very different dimension. Where I was going was Freud; farming and Freud.
Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents was suddenly screamingly relevant to me, especially as the father of psychotherapy counterpointed instinctual freedom with civilization’s demand for conformity. What could be more illustrative of this than the theater of a vineyard? I started to see that the vine was the equivalent of a chicken longing to run free. Men exercised control over the wild grape and placed it in a pen. They took a vine’s frenetic arms and tied them onto wires. They stole the vine out of its natural environment and created tools and chemicals to help the plant adapt to a new home. It’s inevitable to want to tame the wild vine in this way, but it comes with a cost. Why had I never noticed before that with all of the vineyards in the world I’d visited — and I’ve been to beauties, lands that had been cared for by passionate people — they lacked what Georgia had? This particular vineyard seemed to embody it all. All of those in the world hard at work trying to revive soils that had been poisoned and all of those who had given lip service to biodiversity needed to visit Georgia.
In this gorgeous country a cherry tree grew next to an apricot tree, next to a mulberry tree, which lived next to a pomegranate tree, which neighbored a quince tree. The variety was boundless as was the complexity of taste, and that too came through into the grape bunches. I couldn’t stop thinking that in America the bitter had been obliterated of flavor, and taste buds relied only on the monodimensional sensation of sweet. Apples are segregated, grown all together, as are the artichokes, as are the berries. If I ever dared to eat a cherry in the States again, would I be able to tolerate it, or would it seem monochromatically sweet to me? I was sure that part of my excitement about the wines of Georgia was a direct result of the diversity of plantations and tremendously varied soil and rocks. My brain was on fire.
“What’s the matter?” Ramaz asked me, squinting his eyes in concern. He was rolling yet another cigarette. (So much for the pure air.)
“Nothing. Nothing all,” I said. “It’s all so beautiful here. Even the bees don’t sting. They’re so happy and content.” Then I sighed, and they waited for what was next. “But I think maybe something is the matter,” I said, realizing that there was a frown on my face in the middle of my wonderment. “I have a fear. Once the demand grows for your wines, when you both buy more land and expand, will this diversity be gone because you have to make farming more segregated and organized? It’s the same way that I have to organize my desk by piling up papers instead of taking the risk of being buried in the mess. But with that kind of organization comes civilization, organized and segregated vineyards, acres and acres of nothing but vines. Think of the rest of the world and the miles and miles of contiguous vineyards, in Chile or in the United States, and the horrible monoculture.”
At the end of my monologue I swept my hands out in front of me, as if showing off the sights. “Here’s the problem that’s nagging me. How can you become commercially successful and still make sure this stays so pure and in balance? How long will it be before the organization of agriculture and viticulture begin to snuff out the individuality of the flavor? Isn’t it merely the natural course?” It was awful to think about it, but everything that seems to start out so idealistically quickly gets corrupted. How much is just enough of modernization?
Where’s the balance? Georgia is not wealthy. There’s still a great portion of the country that needs indoor plumbing and water systems. The winemakers need to be able to make more money to be able to support themselves, and they are dealing with issues I’d yet to see. It’s a paradox, perhaps not unlike my own as a writer who is modestly well known yet struggles to afford health insurance.
Likewise, Georgian wines — the great ones — are in demand. Companies are importing. Drinkers are buying. Japan is super nuts over wines from this country — oranges, whites, and reds. Denmark and France are heavily into them as well. But it’s not so simple. I’ve been around discussions when importers are looking for winemakers to bottle magnums. The guys here are forced to deal with issues few winemakers from acclaimed territory face. Can they afford the bigger bottle? Even if some of them are lucky enough to have indoor flushables, can they afford the different corks for different bottle sizes? These excellent vignerons are small (averaging two thousand bottles) and not super young — few are under age thirty-five. A fair number are way over fifty and are underfinanced. Every decision they make is weighed very carefully.
I was thinking it was a lot like plumbing. In countries where there are still many outhouses, I sometimes long for a good flush facility. But do the outhouses all collapse once the plumbing pipes go in and the sewage gets transported to a more socially acceptable place far from the living quarters? There is no answer. The idea of having to expand so much is not a goal for these small winemakers at all. But they need to survive.
Stalin’s winemaker, Givi, had told a friend of mine about his take on the new qvevri gang: “Who are these guys? They make three hundred liters of wine and call themselves winemakers? Three hundred liters is what we drink at a wedding!” This was a little unkind but amusing nevertheless. Givi did come from a factory mentality, so small amounts must have seemed trivial to him. Anyway, most small winemakers make more than three hundred liters; probably one thousand bottles is the smallest amount. Iago thinks he’s grown enough; his production has doubled since I first met him. He wants to make enough to feed his family, make his living full time as a winemaker, and leave a legacy for his children. Conquer the wine world? No. Ramaz is another who wants to one day grow from his two thousand bottles to two thousand cases. He wants to grow from miniscule to tiny in order to make wine his sole livelihood. Not one of the guys I hung out with wanted to dominate the world.
For the first time since I’d arrived in Georgia, I was hungry and ready to eat. We had lunch in a narrow hallway in Archil’s house, with his children, parents, and wife. She was quite the cook, and both the perennial and the local were at the table. With cherries everywhere, there were tangy beets in cherry sauce. The dumplings were perfect, like pinched jellyfish, collapsing in my mouth. The vibrant preserved walnuts were nothing that I’d ever tasted. They call them kaklis murabi — dark, black, foreboding to look at, but inside the mouth, dazzling, like wine-poached pears with texture. Nestan, Ramaz’s wife, was thrilled by them and pushed Archil’s wife to explain how they are made.
“The walnut fruit must be picked before the nutshell forms inside the green husk. It’s essential to do so before June 24,” she answered.
There we were, smack on the solstice.
My focus switched to the animated and emotional conversation. Ramaz whispered to me, “They’ve started to argue about the many grapes that were lost during the Soviets.”
With 525 varieties of grapes, how did the Soviets narrow the vines down to the top two and the minor eight? It was criminal. Most people — if they knew anything about Georgia — knew only about Rkatsiteli and Saperavi, the Soviets’ greatest duo. In my short time in knowing Georgia I’d come to love so many other varieties that had almost died, and now they were finally being resurrected. What’s more, I saw that they weren’t forgotten; they lived on, like some sweet memory, like the taste of devil’s food cake made from scratch or a drippingly succulent peach here in the United States. I remember an old man, in his nineties, coming up to me a few years back; he had some wine from a somewhat rare grape, Ojaleshi. All of a sudden there were crowds around us with their glasses outstretched. It was a dream. A miracle. Dry Ojaleshi lives! It had almost disappeared into the off-sweet wine in the Soviet era. But now it can be a creamy, silty dry beautifulness.
With Nestan cradling her jar of walnuts, we pressed on about another forty-five minutes to the home in which Ramaz had been brought up and where he has his vines in the field behind. There it opens up onto a huge expanse where the villagers have their little patches of vines. There, Ramaz is the only organic grower, and among his vines grow an abundance of purslane and horsetail and tons of wormwood and wild strawberries. The vines are planted close to each other on top of very black soil, so different from the red terra-cotta not far away. It is there he grows two white grapes, no rare ones yet — and no red. He told me the story of an eleven-year-old neighbor’s kid. “He comes to me and says, ‘I want to make wine. Will you teach me?’ I told him if he wanted to make wine, he would have to be organic.” He ran back to his father and said, “I am going to be a winemaker.”
The kid has been helping Ramaz work in the vines ever since. That’s the way it goes with Ramaz — one winemaker at a time. Even if he was only eleven, there would be new blood entering the winemaking field.
Ramaz’s house, a rather large country home that surely had been grander before the Soviets marched in, had since fallen into disrepair. Ramaz’s folks were not able to keep it up, and Ramaz, when he was there, was in the vines. The morning we were to leave, I woke up in a room that at one time had probably slept five people, and outside on the porch Nestan and Ramaz slept on a mattress alfresco, looking as content and as sweet as could be. I sat on the steps, listening to his mother feed the chickens, taking notes in the brilliant sun. After coffee we headed northeast to Racha-Lechkhumi. It was known as a once-important wine region and maker of one of Russia’s most beloved wines, Khvanchakara. In fact, there are claims that this too was one of Stalin’s favorite wines. A blend of the Aleksandrouli and Mudzhuretuli grape varieties cultivated in the Khvanchakara vineyards, it’s a naturally semi-sweet wine — meaning the fermentation stops prematurely, leaving the sweet flavors of the wine intact.
The landscape of the upper Rioni River Valley kept me in a perpetual state of mouth drop. The rock. The lakes. The stone. As we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, I became more and more impressed. Iron, carbon, granite, marcasite, quartz, limestone of all colors that is crawling with ancient crustaceans, and, yes, slate, that black stone that had made extraordinary qvevri. The place seemed to be a raw nerve of terroir.
Yet the mountainous, pulse-stoppingly beautiful highland-like region was gravely underutilized and way too poor. This, Georgia’s smallest wine region, with no bottle-ready winemaker currently on the market, needs a champion. We had a dual purpose for going. Ramaz wanted to find a winemaker to showcase at the wine bar who could be a beacon for the region. He wanted a champ. And I wanted to meet a man who made a certain wine I had tasted back in Tbilisi. We found his house; now we had to find the guy.
“Just up the path,” said a young woman I took to be his daughter. “You’ll find him there.”
Engus Natmeladze was toiling between rows of corn and vines, under a cloth hat. His shirt was open and his chest was dripping in sweat. He was squeezing every bit of potential out of the land. So much was grown in that vineyard — corn, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers. Seeing us approach, he rested his hands on the top of his hoe while standing in the sloped vineyard, a sly smile on his face. We walked through the vines, my sandaled feet sinking deep into the newly worked sandy soil. The corn was as high as my eyes, and it was even a little jungle-like. It was hot out there, and the sun was making me sleepy; I was glad when we followed Engus back down to his house, where his black-clad wife had prepared a meal in her open kitchen, right next to the winery, next to the ancient hallowed log in which grapes were stomped. She busied about the table, her beautifully lined face framed by a wrapped black scarf with a knot on top as if it were a kinkhali. I was riveted by her face. She looked so much like my own grandmother. Over and over again I tasted the familiar and I saw the familiar. The hominess of the food and the faces just felt as if they had been part of my lineage growing up in Brooklyn.
That’s the way I had felt about Engus’s wines when I had tasted them in Tbilisi at a wine fair. His red was Beaujolais-like, different from the sweet, syrupy Khvanchakara wines of the region. At the same time that I was marveling at the white, Alaverdi Monastery’s Bishop Davit was tasting it as well. He remarked, “Some people might not like this wine. Some might say it’s dirty. But it reminds me of my grandfather.”
I think I know what he meant. That wine also reminded me of my Ukraine-born grandfather. Pop (as he was called) was intensely religious and even though quite Jewish, bore a resemblance to the Catholic bishop. Both had the beard, both the aquiline nose; both had whimsy. Pop loved to eat and drink in moderation — the feasting concept of Georgia would be alien to him, he who only ate two meals a day and whose weight never varied; when he was done, he was done. He drank every day but perhaps only a drop. But he was particular, and he also struggled to make wine in our basement. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it went to vinegar. When it did work, the smells and aromas were laced with a mustiness that reminded me of old lace brought out into the air after having been in a cedar cabinet. Born not far from Kiev in the year that the light bulb was invented, he was singular and obsessive, and he unwittingly began my wine-writing career by making me his very young drinking partner, teaching me to sniff first, no matter what. Engus’s wine was the bridge for a very personal moment with the bishop.
After we ate and drank, simply but wonderfully, Ramaz asked Engus if he would consider selling them some wine for Ghvino Underground. Instead of being flattered, Engus feigned offense and insisted, “My wine is just for my friends and my family. If you want my wine, you have to come back to feast with me.”
Thwarted, we slunk off to the village of Chorjo. “We need someone from Racha to represent the region,” Ramaz said with determination and a touch of impatience.
We had trouble finding the path that let to Murtaz Vatsadze’s home. We pulled over on the side of the road, where I noticed a gate with a very typical iron design: two kantsi framing a grape bunch. Ramaz left a message for Murtaz, and we waited. While sitting on the roadside waiting for him to come fetch us, I glanced up at a significant incline and what looked like very-well-cared-for vines. Before long we were standing in them. Ramaz looked at the soil and started to mutter. He saw that systemic chemicals had been used — there wasn’t one weed around. Murtaz, with a broad face and premature salt and pepper hair, appeared and said it was hard to farm on the incline, and the chemicals made his life easier. There was another problem: his mother.
We entered the winery. Murtaz grabbed a spade and approached a buried qvevri. He raised the wooden lid and shoved his tool into the thick, wet clay covering that kept the qvevri sealed. As he dug — it took some time — he told us about his process.
“We ferment the red and the white wines on the skins for only one week, just how my father and grandfather did it. Then I press the wine off the skins.”
The covering around the opening of the qvevri came off. At first I thought it was because of the dim lighting that the color of the rim seemed so dark. Feeling my heart beat faster, I walked over closer to get a better look. The qvevri’s opening was a perfect round circle. Sure enough, its lip was a deep ebony, not terra-cotta, stunningly beautiful even though so little of it was visible. Ramaz knelt down, genuflecting, and touched it with envy and desire. The pot was silky. Made long ago by a local, it was like a Stradivarius.
“A master made this,” Ramaz whispered to me. There was a signature on it. He struggled to read it and said, “Whoever made it is long dead.”
This was what Giorgi Barishivilli, a.k.a. the Kvevri, had told me about — the black qvevri from Racha-Lechkhumi, the ones with Rioni River slate sand mixed in with clay, considered the finest. Ramaz knew this, and he touched that rim as if laying a stone on a grave in homage. That was lost art, gone. We had a moment of reverence as Murtaz siphoned off some wine for us not to taste, but to drink.
Suddenly, surprise! A table appeared and was quickly laid with tidbits. Then appeared bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, and jonjoli. Room for more? I wasn’t so sure, but there was no way to get around the situation. So enter the skinny roasted chickens, mashed green beans, cornmeal — a little light snack.
The table was bending with the weight of the food, and we tried to eat just a mere hour after our last meal, at which we had been stuffed with lobio. We tasted the wines, which were simple and very drinkable. Then Murtaz brought out something else. It was a deep amber and tasted rich with a perfect acid. A six-year-old wine, it felt important.
Ramaz looked perplexed. “Your wine is good. Very good. Look, why are you using chemicals in your soil?” he asked again. “Your wines would be even better without them, and the land would be healthier.”
Just as Ramaz finished and Murtaz started to answer, Murtaz’s mother, our chef, emerged from the house and wearily sank down on the stoop descending to the winery. With a saddened, depressed face she watched how much food was not being eaten. She was not pleased. I couldn’t have guessed why until she sharply broke into the conversation. Then Ramaz whispered to me, translating, “Why does the government let the farming store sell us the chemicals if they are dangerous?”
It was back to the Tbilisi cooking school owner’s notion of “Bio wine is bullshit.”
Mother and cooking school owner were a generation apart, and both were ignorant, though the mother’s plight made me feel some empathy. She wanted her son’s wines to be sold in Tbilisi. She wanted them in Japan, in France, and in the United States. She wanted him to find success and more income. But to hitch himself to the growing natural wine crowd he would have to ditch the vineyard chemicals. Earlier in my journey, Iago had said that when they farmed for the Soviets they had been forced to use chemicals for efficiency. But the food they grew for themselves stayed pure and natural. Some in the countryside lost the commitment to nature; others — like Ramaz’s family or Gela’s — never did. It pained Ramaz to see a man with talent, a man with the “touch” — and one with a legendary black qvevri — who didn’t understand the work in the vineyard. Unfortunately, this was one family who hadn’t resisted the Soviet message, and years after the wall fell it endured. But in Georgia it is difficult to rise against one’s mother, and Murtaz’s mother, perhaps worn down by the tough economics of the region, clearly didn’t understand. Ramaz was a hammer. After we left I felt that he might have his way and pound some missionary magic. With the help of the SWAT team of my dreams, Murtaz could emerge to be the champion Racha needed.
On the way back down to Imereti, Ramaz pulled off to the side of the road near a peaceful embankment. “There’s supposed to be one of Georgia’s oldest Jewish temples through the woods. Do you want to go?”
Racha once had a large and ancient Jewish population, which had arrived before the Middle Ages. We walked through nettles and brush to a clearing. Framed by the wildness was a building with some resemblance to the typical architecture of the local churches, with a modified conical dome rising out of a drum. But something about it felt different. While there was a cross on the building — dating from when it was hard to say — there was some sort of Jewish flavor about it, about the windows shaped like Moses tablets, reminding me of eastern Jewish temples I’ve seen. As one is supposed to pray facing east, the building had an eastern orientation. Inside was a ruin, and even though there were more crosses and religious murals, those hadn’t been part of its origins. The east-facing window seemed to look directly toward Jerusalem. There was no way to know how long ago it had stopped being a Jewish house of worship; all that was left was folklore. There had been Jews there — perhaps Engus’s wife, who resembled my father’s mother, with her Asian eyes and large moon face; the fantasy wasn’t so random at that.
We hiked back to the car and drove back down the mountain in the sunset when Nestan insisted on another detour. About 1,100 meters up we stopped at a stunning pristine body of water. It looked like a lake but it was actually the Shaori Reservoir. With the shimmering surface and wisps of moisture coming in, the pines around, and the remoteness, the air was sharp and cleansing. Nestan, with an innocent sturdiness and joy, ran into the water laughing, even though she came out shivering and with puckered skin. The fog was rolling in. All around us were huge slabs of limestone in all colors yet another kind of terroir in a land rich with it. When Gela had pronounced that the Georgian soils could rival the best anywhere, it was no bold boast; I should have known never to doubt him. It’s one thing to be able to grow grapes; they can grow anywhere. But only special places in the world, joined by eccentric and ancient soils, basalt, schist, and granite — the world’s minerals — placed in climates influenced by wind and sun, can grow them in a world-class way. The potential of the Georgia terroir was powerful.
Beets with Cherry Sauce
In June the abundance of cherries turns kitchens into a frenzy, and they turn up in all sorts of inventive combinations, such as with beets. This recipe is an unusual combination that is delicious. Of course, in Georgia cornelian cherries are used. These are not as sweet as our normal cherries and a touch tarter, but terribly complex.
1 pound medium beets, scrubbed
6 tablespoons olive oil
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup dried tart cherries
10 tablespoons water
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped and cooked
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro or dill
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped tarragon
Scrub the beets but do not peel. With 3 tablespoons olive oil, salt, and pepper, place them in a baking dish and cover with foil; cook until tender, 1–1 1/2 hours.
Simmer the cherries, salt, and pepper in the water until very soft, about 10–15 minutes. Force through a sieve, adding water along the way if needed to make a thick sauce.
When beets are cool, peel and cut into 1-inch chunks and place in a bowl. Add the cooked onion and cherry sauce, and mix in the lemon juice and chopped herbs.
Chicken “Gia” Chkmeruli
This is the classic Rachan chicken dish, rich and buttery. It comes from the village of Chkmeri. I’ve seen all sorts of versions, from the pale and anemic to the golden and fat. Here it is, tweaked by Pheasant’s Tears wine bar chef Gia. Traditionally the chicken is fried and then doused in a rich sour cream sauce. Here Gia bakes the chicken in wine, and then it is finished in butter sauce.
1 bulb garlic (that’s right, a whole bulb)
1 chicken, about 2.2 pounds, butterflied
1 cup adjika (see chapter 5)
salt and pepper to taste
1 glass white wine — Rkatsiteli or Chinuri, with or without skin
1/2 stick butter
1 cup milk
cilantro or green onion to garnish
Mince the garlic and divide in two. Rub the chicken with half the garlic, adjika, salt, and pepper.
In a cold baking dish, pour in the wine and place the chicken in, skin side up. You’re essentially baking the chicken in the wine.
Bake at 475° for 25–30 minutes or until cooked.
When cooked, place the chicken parts in a clay pot (called a ketsi in Georgian, made from the same material as a qvevri) or baking pan of terra-cotta if a clay pot is not available.
Meanwhile, make the sauce.
Take the chicken cooking juices, add the butter, the remaining garlic (remember this is very much about the garlic, so don’t be shy), and milk, then boil. When the sauce is boiling, add the jointed chicken and continue to boil for 1 minute, then serve with the garnish.