VINO UNDERGROUND: Tbilisi’s First Natural Wine Bar Is Best Again

In the summer of 2001, I walked into a new cafe bar in Tbilisi’s upscale Vake district, picked a table in the corner and sat down. People glanced at me, turned their noses up, stuck their cigarettes in their pouty mouths and blew streams of smoke to the ceiling. I think it was my shorts. Men did not wear them in public back then.

A waitress approached me as if I were a disease and said, “yes?”

“A glass of wine, please.”

“No.”

I saw a display of wine bottles behind the bar and pointed. “Wine, one glass,” I repeated with a California grin, a forefinger in the air and imaginary glass in my other hand. She walked away. A guy who appeared to be the boss walked over to me and with his hands clasped at his chest asked in perfect English, “how may I help you?”

“A glass of wine, please.”

“I’m sorry,” he said kindly. “We don’t sell by the glass, we only sell by the bottle, but…” He put his finger to his chin and looked past my head. “I don’t see why we can’t. One moment.”

In 2001, only soft drinks and beer were served by the glass. Order a vodka at a bar and the bartender would give you “a” bottle and ask, “how many glasses?” You might find bottled wine on display, but they were decorative, only a foreigner would order one. Corked and labeled wine was purposely flawed, exported to Russia. Otherwise, wine was served by the pitcher and the rule of thumb was three liters per man at a sitting.

In Georgia, wine is traditionally not for contemplation but for celebration, and there is always a reason to ceremonialize. All you need is a friend, a table cloth - a newspaper will suffice - and food, even if it’s just bread and cheese. Only alcoholics drink alone and in Georgia, wink-wink, there are no alcoholics.

If wine was good, you would never be able to enjoy it for its structure, balance or nose. I recall a supra in Kakheti, chugging a water glass full of amber wine, thinking, “my god, I’ve never had anything like this. It’s celestial. Too bad I won’t be able to enjoy it.” Not that I knew a rat’s ass about wine, except that in Tbilisi I could buy a liter of it in a reused plastic bottle for the equivalent of 75 cents. You really want to know why I moved to Georgia?

Storefronts and cellars all over the city sold plonk from half-filled demijohns and plastic barrels by syphoning it into your plastic container of choice. Like the endemic corruption, river bed roads and intermittent electricity, we assumed it would always be like this.

The first turning point in Georgia’s contemporary wine culture was the Russian embargo in 2006, when Putin sanctioned Georgia for its westward geopolitical shift by killing 90 percent of the country’s wine exports overnight. With the market for shitty wine eliminated, Georgia had no choice but to reform the industry and compete globally. You could say Vlad rescued Georgia’s wine culture, but that would piss people off.

The next turning point was when Vino Underground opened in 2012. Soliko Tsaishvili, the high priest of Georgia’s fledgling natural wine movement and a practitioner of biodynamic principles (wine begins in the vineyard!), got together with fellow natural winemakers, Ramaz Nikoladze, Nika Bakhia, Kakha Berishvili, Malkhaz and Zaza Jakeli, and American John Wurdeman to open Tbilisi’s first natural wine bar as a means to sell their wine locally.

Other wine bars soon opened up around the city but Vino Underground was the mothership. In 2016, I started working for Culinary Backstreets, a cool culinary tour company, writing, designing and leading tours. Every week I brought people to Vino Underground for an exclusive tasting of natural Georgian wines poured by Enek Peterson and Natia Cheka. The two girls ran the place, knew the story behind every bottle there, and began to infect me with the viral affection of natural wine.

One evening at a local art exhibition I beelined to the snack table, snatched a glass of wine and took a sip. It was metallic, full of corners, no life or character whatsoever. I was surprised I felt this. I had never noticed a wine’s flaws before unless they choked me. Then a heavenly beam of light filtered through the ceiling illuminating me and God whispered, “Industrial wine sucks.”

Vino Underground became my temple. It’s where I discovered rare varieties like Shavkapito, Otskhanuri Sapere and Budushuri. It was also a place you could sit and sip alone in shorts without feeling like a loser. Feasting wasn’t a prerequisite, nor was expatiating about peace, life, death, love, God, country, family and clinking glasses an obligation. It was western in concept and totally Georgian in everything else.

I once brought four Napa Valley wine snobs there and co-owner Ramaz Nikoladze was pouring. He cuts an imposing figure, lots of brawn, stormy body language. One of my guests had the audacity to ask for a pour bucket and Ramaz responded with a red-eyed executioner’s gaze.

“In Georgia, we don’t pour out wine,” he enunciated pointedly. “It is made with our hearts. We drink it.”

As the woman was melting down her chair, Ramaz’s eyes cleared. He pulled a bucket from behind his back and added with a twinkle, “but for you, I have this.”

You can’t run a wine bar and make great wine, too. Ramaz soon returned to his vineyards in Imereti for good after that episode and by 2021, Eneke and Natia had also moved to Imereti to make wine (Freya's Marani and White Mulberry, respectively). Their departure marked a pivotal moment for the bar, as such shoes cannot be easily filled.

A carousel of people followed, some better than others but none with the zeal and knowledge of Eneke and Natia. And as competition around the city only grew, Vino Underground idled. The owners, now godfathers of Georgia’s natural wine movement, had become so busy making and exporting wine, their cafe became an afterthought. When I first wrote about the place in 2017, they had over 100 labels stocked. When I was there last autumn, there were less than a dozen.

The good news is that Vino Underground is back. What started as a winemaker’s collectively owned bar has transformed into a wine lover’s collectively owned bar. American entrepreneur Andrew Tiorn-hill and friends bought the bar last May and are infusing it with a refreshing, vibrant energy I haven’t seen since Ramaz slammed the pour bucket on the table. There are now wine fridges stocked with carefully selected wines, “meet the maker” tastings and original events, like musical pairings with wine and vinyl.

This association of expat and local friends didn’t buy Vino Underground because they wanted to own a wine bar - they could have opened one anywhere. They bought it because they adore local natural wine and revere Vino Underground’s legacy. Many of them fell in love with Georgian wine here, and like me, began their education at these revamped sewing tables. Being Georgia’s first natural wine bar is a cool story, but what’s really dope is that Vino Underground has again become a Tbilisi institution.

• Vino Underground is also the finale of the Meet Me Here Tbilisi Wine Walk in Sololaki.

Vino Underground

15 Galaktion Tabidze St, Tbilisi

+995 599 08 09 84

7 Days a week 4:00 - 11:00