Ambrolauri

Ambrolauri is the smallest regional capital in Georgia, and it does not pretend otherwise. Around two thousand people live on both banks of the Rioni at 550 metres, in a grid of low houses, a Soviet administrative block, a market that fills up on Saturday mornings and a handful of cafes along the main street. Half a day covers it. But this is the only place in Racha with a bank, a pharmacy, a real supermarket and a reliable filling station, so almost every trip into these mountains begins or ends here.

The town's fame is liquid. Ambrolauri sits at the eastern edge of the Khvanchkara appellation, and a monument shaped like a giant wine bottle stands at the western approach, visible long before the first houses. The Ambrolauri museum of local lore, in a modest building near the centre, holds the archaeological and ethnographic material of the surrounding valleys: Bronze Age metalwork from the Rioni terraces, farm tools, textiles, and photographs of villages that now have a dozen residents.

Racha's other export is food. This is the country of lori, ham salted and smoked slowly through the winter, and of lobio baked in a clay pot with the small dark local beans. Shkmeruli, the garlic-and-milk chicken now on every Tbilisi menu, takes its name from Shkmeri, a village high on the Racha ridge.

The town also has a small airport whose terminal was built in the shape of a wine bottle — a piece of Racha humour that few visitors expect.

From late September into October the valley smells of fermenting must and cars move through the streets stacked with crates of grapes. In winter Ambrolauri is cold and very quiet, half the guesthouses shut, and the snowbound valley has a stillness that is hard to find elsewhere in Georgia.