GEORGIAN BREAD AND WINE TOUR
GEORGIAN BREAD AND WINE TOUR
9 Days of Discovering Georgia and its Heritage
Georgia. Small but mighty. A feisty, wild and beautiful country of bread and wine, walnut, blue fenugreek and cheese. Of big-hearted, generous and proud people who hold and live their long traditions. Where the mighty mountains of the Greater Caucasus, scattered with ancient monasteries and stone villages, tumble down through vineyards that have made wine for 8000 years to the fertile, humid plains hemming the Black Sea. Georgia contains a thousand contrasts. The weight of a long and tumultuous history. The rollicking streets of Tbilisi, with its residue of Persian, Arab, Ottoman and Russian rule. Where young-gun natural winemakers host pop up bars in abandoned Soviet warehouses. They ferment their grapes the traditional way, in underground clay amphora, next door to shops where bakers roll out khachapuri dough on the same bench their great-grandfather did. We want to show you Georgia from the inside. It’s enduring heart and honest belief in hospitality. Georgia shows us a way to live otherwise, that feels urgent in our present moment and is utterly ancient.
We travel slowly, eating and drinking with intention.
Our Approach
This is not a comprehensive survey of Georgian cuisine.
It is a personal passage through it.
We visit winemakers, bakers, cooks, and farmers whose work is inseparable from their daily lives. We enter homes, cellars, forests, and kitchens not as spectators, but as guests.
Much of what we experience cannot be scheduled precisely.
It depends on weather.
On harvest.
On who is home.
We enter the rhythm of the place.
Join us.
Group size: Limited to 10 people
Day 1
September 28
Tbilisi, city of many histories.
Arrive and settle in.
Dinner with Lotus Eaters winemakers, the future of Georgian wine. Radical, traditional, magic.
Sleep: Hotel Makmani, Old City
Day 2
September 29
Beech forest foraging on top of the Ancient Capital
Out to the beech forests of glorious Tianeti past the ancient capital of Georgia, Mtskheta, to hunt wild mushrooms and have a picnic lunch before heading on to renowned wine region Kakheti for traditional qvevri wine and food with the winemaker of Lapati Wines.
Sleep: Hotel Makmani, Old City
Day 3
September 30
Eat on the high plateau
We travel to the high plateau of Javakheti, a stark and beautiful landscape. Lunch in Dukhobors village, home to a Russian spiritual community exiled here in the 19th century, where food is shaped by memory as much as place. Convivial dinner at a local home in Nishgori village.
Sleep: Valodia’s Guesthouse in Meskheti
Day 4
October 1
God and Cheese
Visit the miraculous 12th century cave monastery carved into the cliff face at Vardzia on the old silk road. Then wake up your hands and heart to cook our lunch in a village kitchen home and learn how to make the local Tenili cheese, a process that exists almost entirely outside written recipes. We sit, eat, and share.
Sleep: Valodia’s Guesthouse in Meskheti
Day 5
October 2
Bread and Wine
We make the long drive west. Bread is the centre of every Georgian meal. Without bread there is nothing. We immerse ourselves in grain and fire with a heritage wheat farmer. From the warmth of the hearth where bread is baked like it has been for centuries comes a hearty communal lunch. Soil to table.
Later we visit the cellar of an Imeretian winemaker whose wines sing of powerful limestone soils.
Sleep: Memoire Hotel, Kutaisi
Day 6
October 3
All the world is green
We head for the fertile western plains: peaches, pomegranates, herbs and berries. Another facet of Georgia’s prolific table.
Via the decaying sanatoriums of Tskaltubo, macabre, gorgeous relics of Soviet-era health tourism to a dinner fragrant with this landscape and its produce at the home of Beso, family style and full of singing.
Sleep: Casa de Khasia Guesthouse, Zugdidi
Day 7
October 4
Market and Kitchen
Wake up and discover Zugdidi’s central market, heaving with incredible produce, then spend the day immersed in Megrelian food culture, eating, cooking, laughing and telling stories with a passionate proponent of these ancient traditions, Marika.
Sleep: Casa de Khasia Guesthouse, Zugdidi
Day 8
October 5
Tea and wild Chanterelles
On to tea fields and tastings in subtropical Guria, with maybe more mushrooms along the road and definitely more wine with a family of winemakers at Kobidzeebis Marani.
Sleep: Menabde Winery
Day 9
October 6
Return to Tbilisi
Back to the beginning, but changed. Full. We stop for lunch at Rdzlebi. We share our last dinner al fresco, at Shavi Lomi’s magical outdoor garden. Drink it in. See you next time.
SLEEP : Hotel 20 Rooms
Who We Are
Boris is a lifelong food fanatic. Food and wine are the languages he uses to create stories for people to inhabit together, to find joy and solace, community and culture with. He cut his chef teeth in Basque county, Spain and California, honing his craft in Michelin-starred restaurants before tiring of the rarefied, high pressure atmosphere of fine dining and moving to Melbourne, Australia in 2013 and founded his cult neighbourhood Melbourne bakery All are Welcome, followed by Georgian wine bar Gray and Gray in the old lawyer’s office next door. Boris has spent the last 15 years falling in love with Georgia, eating and drinking his way into village life, making many friends, and collecting the previously unrecorded family recipes, passed down hand to hand for generations, that make up his forthcoming cookbook. He has a backyard of bee hives and a shed full of drying cheese and persimmons in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, not to mention his own vineyard in Georgia. He cooks the best offal you could ever hope to eat.
Martin Martini is the native mushroom king of Australia. Coming from a gloriously patchwork background in art, music, theatre, foraging and food Martin follows a thread of polyphonic creativity and magic through the world. Insatiably curious and driven to share the gold he finds in whatever way he can, he started his mushroom meander business Belly of the World mushrooms in 2019 at a time noone was eating anything except pine mushrooms and slippery jacks. He is well recognised as the initiator of a growing appreciation of the huge number of previously unidentified edible Australian mushrooms. Martin runs mushroom exploration walks all over Australia and internationally and is renowned for his learned but totally untamed, slanted art- centred approach. His short films and t shirts are as famous as his banter. If you see someone harvesting parasol mushrooms in a local field or boletes in a forest, chances are they learnt that from Martin. He has created foraged mushroom pop ups at some of the countries leading restaurants, putting native morels, chanterelles and cordyceps onto menus and plates for the first time. To Martin, mushrooms are another way to inhabit life and the world fully and with passion and wonder, getting waylaid all along the way.
RESERVE YOUR SPOT
INCLUDED
Accommodation
Transport within Georgia
Airport transfers
Meals
Workshops and tastings
Wine with meals
NOT INCLUDED
International flights
Travel insurance
Personal expenses outside of the group scheduleReserve your spot with a A$750.00 refundable deposit
A$7,950 per person.
Based on shared accommodation.
Single supplement available for A$750.00
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Frequently Asked Questions
What makes this trip different from other tours?
This is not a tour built around hotels and attractions.
It’s built around people.
We travel through Georgia by spending time with cooks, winemakers, and families in their own environments — not in staged settings. The experience is shaped by real life: what’s being cooked, what’s in season, and when people are available.
How do you get access to these places?
Everything on this itinerary exists through direct relationships.
We work with a small network of hosts across Georgia — people we know and trust — and we plan the trip around when it makes sense to visit them. This isn’t something that can be booked online or scaled.
Why is the group limited to 10 people?
Because that’s what allows the trip to work.
Small groups can:
sit around one table
cook together
move easily between regions
be hosted in homes without disruption
Larger groups change the dynamic — and the experience becomes something else entirely.
Is this a food tour?
Food is at the center of the journey, but this is not a checklist of restaurants.
You’ll be:
cooking in village homes
baking bread in regional styles
eating meals that are part of daily life
It’s less about “tasting” and more about understanding how people actually eat.
How is the itinerary planned?
The route is built around rhythm, not just distance.
We consider:
when bread is baked
when families are cooking
harvest timing
realistic driving days
This is why some days are full and others are intentionally slower — it reflects how the country actually moves.
Do you guarantee things like mushrooms or seasonal ingredients?
No — and that’s intentional.
This trip follows the seasons, but nature isn’t staged.
If conditions are right, you’ll experience incredible produce in its natural context. If not, we adapt — just as locals do.
What kind of accommodation should I expect?
A mix of:
small boutique hotels in cities
family hotels with private bathrooms in rural areas
Do I need to be a confident traveller or cook?
No.
You don’t need any technical skills — just curiosity and openness. Everything is guided and shared in a relaxed, informal way.
Is the trip physically demanding?
No.
There is some walking (villages, markets, light landscape stops), but nothing strenuous. The pace is steady and designed to be comfortable.
Why does the trip feel different from a typical itinerary?
Because it isn’t built to “cover” Georgia.
It’s built to experience it properly — through people, food, and place — at a pace that allows things to happen naturally.