Off we go, Ms. Korea and Ms. India, with the town at our fingertips just spinning around walking down the hill.
We stop by a winery just around the corner. An old Georgian woman invites us inside. She doesn’t speak English, but she calls her son on the phone to translate. He is interested to meet us,but tells us we are welcome to do the wine tasting with his mother. She will give us 3 small types of Red.
He says he studied wine in California, UC Davis and he spent time in Chicago and he was proud to say he is also attending the 2023 New York wine festival. His mother opens up a Georgian magazine and there is his face in the article. We would have loved to meet him in person, but he was out of town.
A man in a Mercedes is following behind us as he sees us taking photos with the beautiful fall leaves, and the various mountain views. He stops the car to take photos of us and then he says goodbye and continues on. He then stops and he is driving his car along and talking to us at the same time. He is not weird at all, but very nice and friendly showing us where Simone's winery was located.
While we both wanted to visit a famous cheese shop in Telavi, we ended up visiting Simone‘s Winery. The cheese shop was a bit more upscale and formal and we were just in a "let's keep talking and chill."
Our new friend, winery owner and his house, showed us the winemaking process and we had a tasting of white wine, red wine and the famous ja ja.
Ja ja is like an Abstinent or a Raki-it is very strong alcohol, which is made from the leftovers of the wine. What is distilled that is left over and it is aged for a long time. It’s a 40 percent plus alcohol percentage. I had to at least try it once and that was it for me.
Kaheti is known for dry white wine, which was what I was sticking to -just white, no red.
My beautiful friend-ja ja, red, white, red, white, white, ja ja-her tolerance was unbelievable, and Simone could not believe that she could keep up with the Georgian-the troubadour!
Again, we just had the best time together the three of us talking about Georgians and their funny behaviors, how it’s so hard to find people to do work for the house, how she doesn’t have a proper water supply, but she loves a simple life and would not want to live in a big city again. She lives in a very small village with chickens, cows, and limited electricity.
Simone keeps making toast to various things like good health, good fortune, meeting, new friends, saying cheers in Korean and Georgian, and just wishing all of us a great life and a happy one. He says that all his guests are gifts from God and he loves all the countries that come right to his door to taste his wine. How amazing to have a winery where you can be at home and everyone comes to you and you live with your family.
In the small wineries, they are usually started by families. Simone lives with his brother, sister and her husband, his mother and father. He said his great grandmother lived to 117 and she always drank wine and the traditional Georgian yogurt- Makriani.
Simone was always smiling and even if we were speaking of something and he disagreed-he would never speak negatively about any topic. He was always neutral and said there are good people and bad people everywhere you go, but he likes to give people a chance rather than make negative assumptions- example being many Georgians who do not like Armenians. Armenians do not like people from Azerbaijan. Israel doesn’t like Palestine. There are all these world conflicts yet he stressed that you have to stay peaceful, and positive no matter what the circumstance.
Hahe, the Korean girl said she is the woman who drinks like a man and can handle drinking anything. Simone continued to give her many tastes of wine and she actually did Reach a limit. Simone looked very tired as we had so many questions and had spent over two hours together. We left and head back to our original party. Many people had left, but Victor was there playing the guitar. What an educational, fun, adventurous, exciting, thought provoking, blessed, kind, lovely, incredible day!
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