Sighnaghi’s eighth-century Bodbe Monastery
Credit: Maksim Ozerov
Crossing himself after the earthenware qvevri is unsealed, winemaker Gia Gamtkitsulashvili ladles the fresh rkatsiteli wine into a pitcher to a round of applause from an expectant gathering. His qvevri wine is amber, like sap that has frozen in aspic, from vineyards flourishing in the sun-kissed valleys between the snowy Caucasus Mountains.
“I’m happy,” he says. “It’s been in the qvevri for six months, the acidity is balanced, the colour is light. This is how the oldest wine in the world looks.” If one word finagles its way into the lexis of travel this summer, it might be “qvevri”. These lemon-shaped clay vessels have been used to ferment Georgian wines since the sixth millennia BC – and if Covid-19 continues to disrupt major wine tourism destinations such as France, Georgia is waiting in the wings, well-placed after becoming one of the first countries to accept fully vaccinated passengers, wi
ორი გარდაცვლილი და 130 შემთხვევა: რა ეპიდვითარებაა სამეგრელოში
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В Грузии сообщили о завершении восстановительных работ на Ингури ГЭС
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Emerging Europe this week
Central Europe
Doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine that triggered a political crisis and the resignation of the prime minister in
Slovakia should not be administered yet because of incomplete or inaccurate information from the manufacturer, the country’s national medicines agency said this week. The Dennik N news site quoted the agency as saying it could not properly assess the shots, which it said were different from the vaccine whose favourable peer-reviewed late-stage trial results were published in The Lancet medical journal in February. The Slovakian president, Zuzana Čaputová, last week named Eduard Heger as prime minister after his predecessor, Igor Matovič resigned over his secret purchase of the Russian vaccines.