Kakheti Wine Loop

Kakheti is the heart of Georgian wine and the easiest region in the country to drive. The whole loop is on asphalt, the legs between stops are short, and you are never more than two hours from Tbilisi. Three days is what it takes to stop rushing through cellars and instead sit down, taste properly and sleep where you tasted.

Day one belongs to Sighnaghi, the walled hill town whose cobbled lanes and rampart walk frame the Alazani valley and the whole Caucasus ridge in a single view; two kilometres away is Bodbe Monastery, the burial place of St Nino. Day two is the regional capital, Telavi, with the Batonis Tsikhe palace of King Erekle II, followed by Tsinandali — the Chavchavadze estate with its English-style garden and the 1841 cellar that produced Georgia's first bottled wine. Day three opens with Alaverdi, a fifty-metre eleventh-century cathedral standing alone in the fields, and ends in the Kindzmarauli zone around Kvareli.

What you actually see: qvevri cellars where wine ferments in buried clay jars, family tables that turn into long lunches, endless vineyards under the mountains, and several of the greatest monuments of Georgian architecture. The route works all year, but late September and October, during the rtveli harvest, is unbeatable. An economy car is entirely enough. One rule matters above all: whoever drives does not taste.