Asureti

Asureti is forty kilometres from Tbilisi and belongs to an entirely different 19th century. The village was founded in 1818 as a Swabian German colony called Elisabethtal. Families from Württemberg, leaving for religious and economic reasons, settled in the South Caucasus at the invitation of the Russian empire; Asureti, Bolnisi and a handful of other villages are the result of that wave.

What survives is the street. The houses are two storeys, with tiled gable roofs, wooden balconies and deep stone cellars built for wine; the year of construction is often carved above the door. The layout is rigidly planned — a straight street, equal plots, a service building at the end of each yard. This is not the logic of a Georgian village, and that is exactly why it stands out.

In the centre is the Lutheran church, built in the late 19th century, with the old German cemetery beside it. The German population was deported to Kazakhstan and Central Asia in 1941 and never returned.

The second inheritance is wine. Asureti gives its name to Asuretuli Shavi, a local red grape the colonists propagated. Several families still make it and there are small cellars in the village. Some houses have been restored, others are quietly falling down, and that contrast is part of the history too.