Georgia is a hospitable country. And the best way to know the country is to be a guest in one of its houses. To see how people live from inside. So today we invite you to one Gerogian house where we’ll see how grapes are gathered to become wine, chacha or churchkhela.
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The house is located on one little Georgian village. Д
The grapes have been gwoing here for about fifty years.
This car has been bought for 4000 dollars in Georgia.
There is neither gas, nor water supply and sewage in the village.
The water for the grapes is taken from this well. One of the rich neighbours has an artesian well and locals come to him for water.
Toy house that was being built from the 1980s to 1992.
This is how it looked like in summer 1991 or 1992.
There are three rooms on the second floor and four – on the first.
Yes, it’s Stalin’s portrait on the wall.
This clock does not work already.
Now we are down on the first floor. To the left is the oldest room of the house, straightly is the new part: a dining-room and a basement where food is stored.
These ones are used to make pop corn (baty-buty in Georgian).
This is the room this house started from. Now it’s used as a lumber-room. Eight persons used to live in this room many years ago. The dirt floor has been trodden down for such a long time.
The wood is black with soot because there was a stove in the room. People who used to live here were rather poor.
This is a kitchen. Everyone eats here while food is cooked in a separate room with help of gas cylinders.
This is a basement in the new part of the house.
This fridge is 50 years old and it still works rather well!
These are the old capacities for wine storage. They are called “kvevri”. Plastic capacity will never compare with a kvevri!
Filled jar was covered with a stone, and the cavity on top was compacted with earth. Thus the wine was aging in the ground.
The bottle of wine – it’s a 100% fermented grape juice. When it is sold, sugar and water are often added to increase the amount.
But how is wine made here?
They usually combine two sorts of grape: goruli and goruli mtsvane.
Sometimes they also use sultana grape, but its berries are too small.
Here grape is crushed.
The bigger your weight is the better.
The juice is sterilized.
Squeezed juice is inside the barrels.
Grape pomace is collected separately. After a while it will turn into mead, which will be used for making Georgian vodka – chacha.
When the sediment appears in the bottles the juice is poured into another bottle, the sediment itself is also used for making chacha. They repeat the process of pouring from one bottle into another till the juice becomes transparent.
While men are busy with wine, women are making Georgian “Sneakers” – churchkhela. The recipe is simple: they heat grape juice on the fire till it becomes viscous (it can be a separate dish called “tatara”). Then nuts strung on the thread are added into the mass. With raisins sometimes. Then the bars are dried and churchkhela is ready.
The pomace remaining after the crushed grapes is used to make mead.
Let’s also see how chacha, Georgian vodka, is made.
This is a standard apparatus for making chacha. The brew is boiled in a sealed boiler (to the left), alcohol evaporates under the impact of temperature, the vapor moves along the pipe and gets to the next tank.
The tank is filled with cold water so the pipe inside is always cold therefore hot vapors of alcohol start condensing on it.
Chacha is coming out.
About 50 degrees!
Some people infuse vodka with St. John’s wort.
This one was made from red grapes, as you can see. It can be used as a good fertilizer, when goats eat it they get drunk and start singing songs..
It only remains to taste it!
Such a nice place an ordinary Georgian country house is!
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