The Land of the First Wine

The marionette show in a theatre inside a twisted tower in the heart of Tbilisi moved me in ways I’m still discovering. The play, a mixture of Alexandre Dumas’ The Lady of the Camel­lias and Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, touched something deep within, despite my usual wariness of puppetry.

Influenced by too many “Muppet Shows” and Sicilian “opera dei pupi” broadcast on Italian TV in the 1970s and ’80s, puppets with their glacial, fixed stare often trigger an uncanny reaction in me. Yet, the first thing I did when landing in Georgia at the end of November was to head straight to the Gabriadze Theater, thanks to the kind concierge of the oddly named and charming hotel, the Unfound Door, who miraculously arranged two last-minute seats for my wife and me.

We were late, so we rushed through the Tbilisi traffic, bundled in wool scarves and hats in the chilly autum­nal wind. “It’s an unmissable show,” an acquaintance had promised. We sat in the semi-hidden darkness under a balustrade in the back of the quaint, wooden theatre. For the next hour of Alfred and Violetta, we were taken on a roller coaster of a love story blossoming in a poor neighbourhood of Tbilisi 50 years ago, when a young upper middle-class boy falls in love with a charming girl forced into prostitution by a miserable fate.

The story carries the audience across Milan, Rome, Venice, plus three other towns in Georgia. There are a talking locomotive and bird, and other magical realism surprises. At one point, when Alfred is in Italy longing for Violetta, he sighs as his shoes walk by themselves behind her red high-heels—one of the best theatrical representations I’ve seen of what it feels like to miss a loved one. It’s a tale of war and oppression, passion, hate, and struggle for survival, as history marches on, in a cyclic pattern.

The new adaptation takes place in the ’90s, as Russian troops push in from the North, wreaking havoc and unleash­ing chaos once again in this small coun­try of 3.7 million people. It powerfully transmitted the weight of having such a challenging and forceful neighbour. We left our last-minute seats thrilled by the experience created with impressive artistic freedom by Georgian author Rezo Gabriadze, who grew up collecting prizes and honours in the USSR, but once back from Moscow decided to tell this story about his people’s plight.

After a delectable dinner at Otsy’s, right across from the Gabriadze, we strolled back to the Unfound Door, on that November 28. As we inched up the right bank of the Kura River, through Liberty Square and Shota Rustaveli Avenue, we observed a growing commo­tion on the streets.

A stream of protesters draped in Georgian white-and-red-crossed national flags filled the thoroughfare, while others wore the blue, circle-starred European Union flag tied around their necks like superheroes’ capes. They all headed in the direction of the Georgian Parliament, creating an atmosphere of anticipation, a gathering of forces headed to a clash. We were unaware that a considerable political storm was mus­tering, one that would last for weeks.

The timing was serendipitous: we had just emerged from a marionette show about Georgians resisting Russian pressure into the reality of Tbilisi’s streets, now filled with young protest­ers arguing that Moscow had interfered with their elections.

At stake was Georgia’s future as a true crossroads between Europe, West Asia, and the Middle East—a nation strategi­cally located between the Black Sea, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Caucasus mountains. Beyond those peaks lies the uncomfortable Russian presence that has become, understandably, a political and cultural obsession in this country.

As the crowd thickened, we noticed groups of well-built men hiding their faces behind balaclavas and under base­ball caps—the infamous special forces. According to the former president of Geor­gia, Salome Zourabichvili, who belongs to the opposition, these forces are infiltrated by Russian agents and collaborators, some of them high on methamphetamines.

The tension mounted palpably. We decided it was time to leave just before the “men in black” charged the protest­ers and the fire hydrants dispersed the crowds—a series of events that would repeat themselves for weeks afterwards. It became a strident arm-wrestling com­petition between the government and opposition supporters demanding new elections under international supervi­sion. The narrative of Georgia’s resis­tance to its more powerful neighbours would come to define our visit to what proved a far more charming country than I had anticipated.

I had approached travelling to Georgia with reservations, misled by preconceptions. My fears stemmed from previous trips to the harsh, cold, and unsmiling world of former Soviet cities like Murmansk, a chilly Russian nuclear icebreakers’ harbour near the North Pole, or like grey Chernobyl, still haunted by nuclear tragedy when I visited it in 1995.

In truth, I’d only heard positive things about Georgian food, wine, people, mountains, monasteries, and landscapes. Yet to connect with a place emotionally, I need to understand the layers of events that have accumulated there through the centuries.

I crave a sense of the historical mean­ing that preceding generations have at­tached to nature and cities—like the fact that the Argonauts came here seeking Jason’s Golden Fleece, a myth rooted in Georgia’s long history of gold mining, as I would discover visiting an impressive jewellery collection across from Tbilisi’s troubled Parliament. Or that people here have been fermenting wine far longer than anywhere else in the world, includ­ing France, Italy, and Spain, as I’d learn travelling to the Kakheti region later.

The country’s diversity astounds: Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Russians, and more call this land home. Yet Georgians maintain a fierce pride in their national identity, sometimes to the point of con­flict and chauvinism. To better under­stand this cultural tapestry, I watched old Georgian classics before my trip, including Blue Mountains, or Unbeliev­able Story (1983) and The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985). It helped me prepare for what I encountered after landing in Tbilisi on that cold autumn day.

ART AND POLITICS

At the airport, I searched among the crowd of drivers for a sign bearing my name. Finding none, I continued scanning faces until a man with a scruffy white stubble, a long, triangular chin, high cheekbones, and deep, light hazelnut eyes approached me with a hint of a smile. For a fraction of a second, I thought he might be hustling but I immediately caught a glimpse of under­standing in his gaze. “Carlo?” he said.

This was Zviad, who I’d contacted through a friend of a friend. I’d been worried he would show up in the archaic white minivan featured in his WhatsApp profile photo—a German clunker with rounded lines that he later described as his “brother,” having survived Russian bullets at its wheel during yet another war with the north­ern neighbour in 2008. To reassure me, he’d sent pictures of a cherry-coloured VW, which would become our chariot for exploring both the capital and countryside in the days ahead.

At 66, Zviad Pirtskhalava was more than just a veteran of automobiles who loved talking about cars. He’d imported many, driving them from the Nether­lands back to Georgia via Italy and across Turkey. He knew the roads, the people, the languages. But most surprisingly, the intriguing, chain-smoking Zviad was also a semi-professional actor. We dis­covered this a few minutes into our drive when he proudly told us that his son Davit won an international prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 2015 for his short film Mama (‘Father’)—a touching and profound half-hour tale—available on YouTube—a delicate exploration of the relationship of two robber brothers with their father, skilfully played by Zviad.

Before embarking on our road expe­ditions, we visited two museums facing parliament. In daylight, without the protesters and their flags, the avenue ap­peared narrower, as workers hammered plywood sheets across the building’s en­trance in preparation for more trouble.

After a brief run at the over-bearing Georgia Museum of Fine Arts in my “artwork overkill” mode—pacing fast through the halls, stopping only when something catches my eye— we moved next door to the Georgian National Museum’s basement, housing an extraordinary collection of ancient gold jewellery that connects directly to Georgian history.

But it was the top floor, dedicated to the grim Museum of Soviet Occupa­tion, which brought back our journey’s leitmotif: the Russians are coming! The artifacts exuded an eerie sense of oppres­sion. Most memorable was a bouquet of Russian army rifles and caps standing beside a wall adorned with large black-and-white portraits of artists whose eyes were dreamy, searching, inspired, ironic—the gaze of musicians, actors, and authors. Among them: a drama director, the founder of the Georgian Art Museum, the head conductor of the Georgian National Opera, an artist, and a poet. They had all been shot in 1937 as part of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge after show trials with evidence fabricated by Soviet secret police.

THE LEGEND OF THE SURAMI FORTRESS AND STALIN’S HOME

Arts and politics seem to emerge at every turn in Georgia. The day after our mu­seum visits, Zviad drove us to the very Surami fortress that had inspired one of the films I’d watched before my trip. Our route took us northwest, skirting South Ossetia—a region invaded by Russian troops in 2008, when Moscow installed a friendly government in this occupied Georgian territory.

Before reach­ing Surami, we stopped at the panoramic Jvari monastery, perched on a tall hill overlooking the confluence of two rivers: the Kura flowing from the west, and the Aragvi tumbling down from the Caucasus. Inside the small chapel, a for­tuitous blackout allowed the Byzantine Orthodox Christian gilded icons to shine in their intended magical beauty—their halos radiating a wondrous sense of holi­ness by candlelight rather than being washed out by harsh neon illumination.

In the semi-darkness, I heard Hebrew mingling with Farsi as Israeli and Iranian tourists walked peacefully side by side, surrounded by larger groups of Indi­ans. The irony wasn’t lost on me: these archenemies currently setting the Middle East ablaze, were visiting, side by side, an Orthodox monastery in a country wor­ried about invasion from the imperialistic dreams of a new Russian Czar.

Emerging from the chapel, I gazed into the valley below where the remains of another occupying empire still stood. Pompey’s Roman-era bridge traversed the Kura just before the west­ern river’s meeting with the northern stream, forming a sort of cross evoking the Georgian flag—a fitting symbol for this crossroads nation.

En route to the parking lot, I em­braced the tourist role completely and bought one of those North Georgian shepherd’s hats made with white sheep’s wool standing straight out, making the wearer look like a cat that has stuck its paw in an electric socket. I’d spotted these hats in The Legend of the Suram Fortress, and since we were heading to that very fortress, it seemed appropriate to dress the part.

The legend behind Suram appears simple enough: a fortress that keeps col­lapsing can only be made secure, accord­ing to prophecy, if a young heir is buried alive within its walls—a tale of youth sacrificed to protect the homeland. The film version by Soviet Armenian genius director Sergei Parajanov, released after 15 years of censorship, and the filmmak­er’s four years of jail for “lewd acts” and “bribery,” presents the story as a series of dreamlike tableaux filled with symbolic power and minimal dialogue. Like so much of Georgian culture, it grapples with the eternal question of how to face invasions from foreign armies that have so often held the upper hand.

Driving back to Tbilisi, we made an inevitable stop in Gori, birthplace of perhaps the most notorious Georgian of all: Joseph Stalin, born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. Georgia’s leading Bolshevik abandoned his training as a Russian Orthodox priest after discover­ing Karl Marx, robbed a bank stage­coach to fund his cause, and despite re­taining a heavy Georgian accent all his life, rose to become the supreme leader of Soviet Russia. Like Adolf Hitler, who hailed from marginal Austria, Stalin was also a Southern foreigner with an accent, who led his adopted nation through World War II’s victory while purging and murdering countless innocent intellectuals, politicians, and farmers, before ushering in the nuclear night­mare of the Cold War.

A group of tourists, seemingly unaware of this leaden history, posed cheerfully in front of Stalin’s statue. His childhood home now stands enshrined within elegant columns that both pro­tect the crumbling structure and elevate it to cult status—an unsettling monu­ment to Georgia’s most infamous son.

As we drove out of Gori, our minds still processing the jarring sight of Stalin memorabilia—wine bottles bearing his image, paintings of the Great Soviet leader tenderly holding a girl—I noticed a massive mural covering the side of a ten-storey building.

It portrayed the bespectacled Merab Mamardashvili, another son of Gori, a philosopher who died in 1990. His famous words, “loneliness is my profes­sion,” resonate with every writer’s soul. Watching his solitary effigy looming over that stark building, I couldn’t help but admire a city that would choose to commemorate on its walls a philosopher rather than a sports figure.

These days, however, most Georgians associate the name Mamardashvili with Giorgi, the professional goalkeeper who plays for Valencia and the national team. “O tempora, o mores,” as Pompey might have said crossing his bridge over the Kura: “Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!”

On our return journey to Tbilisi, we stopped to explore one of Georgia’s oldest urban settlements: Uplistsikhe, perched high on the rocky left bank of the Kura. The caves and structures here date back to the 2nd century BC, to the early Iron Age. True to Georgia’s nature as a crossroads, the site displays rock-cut architectural influences from both Anatolia and Iran, blending pagan and Christian elements. It served as a major stronghold during the Muslim conquest of Tbilisi from the 8th to 10th centuries, before falling to devas­tating Mongol raids in the 14th century.

Standing at the mouth of a cave, I gazed across the plain below, where the sun traced the silhouettes of horses grazing by the riverbank. Invasions, destructions, the coexistence of different political systems and religions—Geor­gia seems unchanged in its soul, unable to escape its geographic destiny as a world in-between, at once Asian and European, caught between Russian pres­sure from the North and Armenian and Azerbaijani influences from the South.

RUNNING WITH ZVIAD TO DISCOVER THE LEGEND OF DAVID GAREJI

The following day found us at the Azerbaijani frontier, where a solitary cabin perched on high stilts housed a border police observation post. Zviad, speeding to the sound of ‘Run like hell,’ his favourite Pink Floyd tune blasting on the VW’s stereo, drove us to a special farm where he bought cheese for his wife.

We were en route to the Kakheti re­gion, renowned worldwide for its bread and ancient wines. After finding our path blocked a few times by shepherds on horseback wielding batons in the air like Polo sticks, we paused at a monas­tery straddling the border, the centre of a famous dispute that had recently landed two cartographers in jail.

The monastery’s story intertwines with Saint David of Gareji, a 6th-centu­ry desert father and wonderworker, one of the 13 Assyrian apostles who brought Christianity to what was then the kingdom of Iberia, now part of Georgia. According to legend, returning from Jeru­salem, David carried three stones taken from the Holy Land. The Patriarch caught him near Nablus and recovered two, but David escaped with one—the “stone of grace,” believed to possess healing powers. Living in caves and performing miracles, David established a monastic complex that grew in spiritual and cultural significance, though it suffered numerous raids through the centuries.

Today, the David Gareji monastery remains entangled in Georgia’s modern identity and territorial disputes. In 2020, cartographers Iveri Melashvili and Natalia Ilychova were arrested over the monastery’s contested ownership—a dispute dating to Georgia’s 1991 indepen­dence, with Azerbaijan claiming the site for its strategic position overlooking their plains. A controversial map showing the monastery within Georgian borders led to political tensions and the cartographers’ arrest on charges of border falsification.

Leaving the contested monastery behind, we ventured into Kakheti’s wine country. A local farmer welcomed us into his wine cellar, where he ferments red and white (orangy, really) ancestral wines in enormous amphoras buried in the ground next to his family’s living room, using an ancient technique. Though the region increasingly draws tourists, it retains—for now—an authentic charm, especially at roadside stops where vendors sell traditional bread shaped like wool spools, perfect for stuffing with fresh or melted cheese—a process Zviad eagerly demonstrated.

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL AS THE SULPHURY VAPOURS MIX WITH TEAR GAS

Back in Tbilisi, the nightly protests be­fore Parliament had grown increasingly dangerous. Opposition leaders were arrested while young women danced de­fiantly before water cannons, laughing in the face of authority. Some wounded, many arrested, much rage.

A new pro-Russia president, a formerly famous footballer, was soon sworn in by the majority government, even as the previous president refused to concede, demanding new elections un­der international oversight. The protests spread to Gori and other major cities, set­ting Georgia abuzz with tension. Friends abroad wrote concerned about our safety, though, as often happens, social media’s alarmist filter paints a magni­fied, scarier picture than the reality on the ground. Still, we thought it’s smarter for our health to keep our distance from Parliament at night.

Before departing, while Zviad waited to drive us to the airport sucking on his umpteenth cigarette, we sought refuge in the famous sulphur baths of the old city, their ancient domes rising like half-buried eggs in the heart of old Tbilisi. As I floated in the warm mineral water, watching wisps of steam dance above my head, I thought about that puppet show that had started our journey.

Like the vapour swirling above, Geor­gia’s essence seemed both tangible and elusive—a nation of paradoxes and shift­ing frontiers where ancient Christian monasteries host Israeli and Iranian tourists, where a philosopher’s portrait looms over the birthplace of Stalin, where puppet theatres tell deeper truths than news broadcasts.

The steam rose and dispersed like the layers of history we’d encountered: Ar­gonauts and amphoras, Roman bridges and Russian invasions, all settling into the valleys between these proud moun­tains, now attracting international ski­ers. The sulphury vapour dancing with the tear gas shot at the protesters…

In the water’s embrace, I understood why Georgia has survived centuries of invasion and occupation—its culture, like these healing waters, springs eter­nal from deep within the earth, nour­ishing body and soul. Outside, beyond these ageless walls, young protesters were still gathering, their flags catching the winter wind, writing new chapters in Georgia’s endless story of resistance and renewal. We will return, I decided, drawn back by this liminal land where East embraces West, where every story, even a puppet show, carries the weight of history and the promise of tomorrow.

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