And so what happened to that man I fought with at the beginning of this journey, the one I met when Niki took me to that party at Culinarium? That argumentative, chain-pulling man who unwittingly sent me on a journey one jet-lagged night when he poured me a terribly inferior rosé from France and told me that organic wine was bullshit. Had he changed too?
It was on my mind to find out. But I wasn’t sure I was up for it.
“Come to Culinarium with us tonight,” John said.
I balked. “I’m not sure I want to go,” I answered.
“But why?” he asked.
“It’s my last night, and I want a comfort zone,” I said. But of course I wanted to hang with him and the others during my last hours in Georgia, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. It was poetic that I should circle back to the starting point of a journey, so I started to reconsider. “What’s going on?”
“Jeremy is going to preside over a Chinese menu and Chinuri tasting,” he answered.
“What?” I asked. Jeremy was the sommelier from Chicago who had come to change his life in Georgia, the very same guy who had jumped into Iago’s qvevri to help him scrub them.
“You don’t know that “Chinuri” is the Georgian word for ‘Chinese’?”
“No,” I said. I then knew ten words in Georgian instead of nine.
“We’ll pair Chinuri with the Chinese appetizers that Tekuna will prepare. It’s stupid. It might not work, but it will be fun, and everyone will be there so you’ll get to see them all.”
“Will that man, the one I fought with, be there?”
“Who cares?” John didn’t really grasp that I was shy about returning to the scene of that incident.
I cared, but I gave in. “Okay. It’s totally cool. I can deal with him.”
If there were more arguments, I’d be there with my people and armed with a depth of knowledge about Georgia and why the organic and natural mattered. I was ready.
It was winter in Georgia. In the roadside stalls, hooked pigs’ heads, river fish, and planks of squash marked our route to visit a winemaker near the Armenian border.
Driving south, I thought about how quickly things can move in that wonderful country. It had been only four months since my last steps on Georgian ground, and the moment seemed perfect. Putin was almost behaving. The plumbing and electricity were more efficient. There were almost too many new wine producers to keep track. There were sparks of life in the lost regions. More women were jumping into the qvevris. John’s town of Signaghi had been reborn as a tourist-ready natural wine destination. The World Bank had stepped up and pitched in to develop Bishop Davit’s plan for Qvevri House at Ikalto. The small growers were no longer boganos, no longer farmers without land. They were purchasing land and farming it. The dream to be a wine shepherd was being realized. And as far as cross-pollination, there was an increasing stream of Americans and Danes coming to Georgia for that . . . fairy dust, as evidenced by Jeremy.
The weather was warmer near the border. The land seemed unassuming, less dramatic. The winemaker’s Mtsvane was solid, and we feasted, knowing that there was a long night ahead of us, especially for me, as I would not have time between the sheets before my 6:00 a.m. flight. As we left, the chacha materialized. I smelled mine, and it was pretty mousey, so I snuck off unseen and pitched it into a plant. But the poor sommelier, Jeremy, was cornered into doing shots. The winemaker had been a pretty serious military man at one time, and there was no saying no to him. The sommelier promptly fell asleep in the backseat as we drove back to Tbilisi. We had about an hour to recoup, regroup, and head to the evening.
I walked over and saw the lemony lights of the Culinarium window silhouetting the little square in Vera. The school was inviting and filled with the kinds of modern Georgians with whom I hadn’t come in contact much, but around the big communal table were the core group of chummy winemakers with whom I’d spent so much time. Seeing Niki with an empty chair beside him at the table, I took it.
I looked up at the blackboard that showed the wines by the glass. I did a clear double take; I wasn’t sure if I had read the board correctly. There in English it said, “Our selection of organic wines.”
“Something has changed, indeed!” I said. “Is that guy here? You know, the one I fought with the night you took me here?”
Understanding me, Niki smiled and softly said, “You are safe, Alice. He is no longer a partner.”
I suppose as I saw in front of me a transformation from “Bio is bullshit” to “Our organic wines,” he had to have been gone. I felt a wild sense of relief, as if the troops had receded. With rooting eyes I scanned the room like a detective and saw, as if a vine running away from the Turks (or at least the natural wine police), one conventional bottle hiding out.
We were late to start, and our wineglasses were empty. “Where is Jeremy?” I asked John.
“Don’t know,” he said looking concerned. He called him again and said to me, “It keeps on going to voice mail.”
“This is really strange,” I said to John. “I mean, he’s a professional. You just do not not show up. Is he even alive?”
“Don’t get hysterical,” John said to me. Then shrugging to Tekuna, he gave in to having to run the show.
“Friends,” he boomed out, switching between Georgian and English. Then we were off with a brand new Chinuri from Stalin’s home town, Ateni.
As the event progressed, I noticed that a few of the guests were confounded over the cloudy Pheasant’s Tears in their glasses and arguing if it was correct or not. “Is it supposed to look like that?” they asked John.
John walked over with the bottle, plunked his thumb over the opening, dramatically shook it up, and poured it anew. Now the wine had progressed from cloudy to pure fog. “Try it now,” he said.
They marveled. The wine was different. Almost more complete.
“That is the magic of natural wine,” John said, ever evangelical.
At the end of the evening Tekuna came to sit next to me. She was working her own battle against the staunch traditions of Georgian cuisine, frustrated with a lack of creativity and a focus merely on the past. It was difficult to bring a more sophisticated form of cuisine to a city where rustic restaurants, which looked like home kitchens, were more the norm. I complimented her on a quince soup and a beetroot cake — take a carrot cake and just substitute beets — and I asked her about the missing partner. She was one of the few people who hadn’t known about my fight with him, but she listened with amusement. “He didn’t belong here,” she said.
“And what do you think about naturally made qvevri wine?” I asked her.
She’s a woman who had traveled for work throughout the world — Singapore, New York, London. She took a sip of Iago’s Chinuri and said, “If you care about your ingredients, it’s the only way.”
If only the rest of the world — the big chefs, the small chefs, those who believe in seasonal and organic — would realize that wine is also food. Was it so damned difficult to understand?
Time to get rowdy. We walked over to Ghvino Underground, and on the way I examined the wonderful parade of past and future. The women winemakers of Georgia were out! Marina and Téa were no longer the only contenders. They had been joined by a twenty-five-year-old dance lover named Mariam Iosebidze, who had just made her first vintage of Dancing Girl wine. Other changes? Iago had just finished his first year of the dream: he was now a full-time winemaker.
Perhaps there will be the fancy boys and girls going to Tbilisi’s wine school, looking for the cushy life technology can give, but never mind; the natural wine movement in Georgia was safely on its way. At about midnight the crowd burst into applause as Jeremy, looking a little ragged and sheepish, descended the steps into the wine bar.
He had been done in by the chacha.
The bottles flowed. There must have been at least thirty of us drinking and talking in a way that seemed impossible back in the States. Ideas and friendship and wine — these are what mattered, even as the world was going to hell elsewhere. We drank more wine.
There were only a few hours to go before my flight back home, and going to bed was irrelevant. But when it came time to prepare for the short trip to the airport, John, who had started his Georgian romance two decades ago, walked me back along the darkened river. We stood for what seemed like a long time on the bridge over the water, in the city in the country where I had come to look for magic, or at least answers.
“So John, did Stefan ever get vines in Ajara?” I asked.
“The shepherd? Yes. He now has half a hectare of Chkhaveri planted in his mountain village of Qvashta, courtesy of Gela and John. It’s a start.”
“And any other news that I need to know about?”
It turned out that Thierry, Gela, and John had bought some vineyard land near the Pompeii of wine. Death and life restored. Wine and its meaning in a senseless world. I suppose Georgia will always be connected to issues that are large and powerful for me. To my brother. To friendship. To wine and to love. I would have wanted to have been part of that rebirth in Meskheti. Yet even if I couldn’t plant the vines in a land where they were almost forgotten, I will one day drink that wine from a glass, a piala or a kantsi, as friends revive what could have been lost, what was the past, and what will be the future.
The city was glistening, twinkling, impossibly romantic, crumbling with the past and embracing graceful new architecture, like the bridge in front of me that crawled over the river like a snail. The paradox didn’t jar me. I embraced it.
With travel come new ideas. People will travel to Georgia to get the idea of how to return to simplicity, and Georgians will pick up new flavors and techniques by traveling. It’s inevitable. The trick for growth or fusion is to always have the flavor of the past somewhere hidden. In that way Tekuna is the future. The positive future. She is steeped in traditional cooking and taking it to a star cuisine stage.
Elarji is from a region of Georgia I hadn’t gone to, Samegrelo. It’s a twist on the popular polenta cakes, mchadi.
2 cups cornmeal or grits
8 cups water
1/2 pound smoked sulguni (or a combination of smoked gouda or mozzarella), grated
3/4 cup flour
eggs
1/3 cup panko bread crumbs
Cook the cornmeal or grits slowly in the water on a low temperature. When it’s done, add the grated cheese and stir it in one direction until the cheese melts completely. Put the hot mixture on a shallow dish, wait for it to cool, and then shape it into ping pong—sized balls. Roll them in the flour, then dip them in eggs and panko. Keep cool in the refrigerator until ready to begin serving. Fry them for 5–7 minutes. Serve with almond baje.
1 3/4 cups skinned almonds
1 teaspoon red curry paste
1 teaspoon Svaneti salt (see chapter 3)
1/2 teaspoon dry coriander
1/2 teaspoon marigold flower
chili powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste
water
Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend well. Add water slowly until a smooth sauce forms. Season with salt and pepper if needed.
Keep it in the refrigerator until ready for use.