WINE BOUTIQUE: Tbilisi’s Coolest Wine Shop

“Hey, American! Modi, modi!” Shalva beckoned with the back of his hand. The retired gas man was sitting in his cage above his garage with his posse from the hood. “Dajiki, dajiki!” He ordered, pointing to a little stool at a table decorated with a newspaper table cloth, bread and cheese. I had just come up from the market with some essentials. It wasn’t quite noon. Shalva grabbed a lip-marked water glass, flung the remains to the floor and filled it with a cloudy amber from a two-liter Coke bottle. He topped off everyone else’s glasses, then his own and jutted his chin at me. My toast.

“For Vera, our neighborhood,” I said. “And everyone who lives here.”

“Vera!” The men replied and we knocked back our wine. I remained seated. I knew the routine. Shalva would not let me leave after one, for there was always a second drink because we have two legs. Then there would be a third, because three is a holy number. A couple hours later I’d waddle through my door with the morning’s provisions, face glazed like a donut.

“Shalva?” My wife would smirk.

For the first several years, until Shalva’s death, the cage was my watering hole whether I wanted it to be or not. The only way to civilization from our house was past Shalva’s and he never took no for an answer. He was the big hoss of our little cross street. The wine was what you’d expect from a reused plastic bottle, still better than anything corked, for properly labeled wine was the shit exclusively exported to Russia.

At home, free from a reason to indulge, we could drink at our own pace. We could sip. We bought wine from dealers in any number of cellars or storefronts scattered around the city. We’d hand them our plastic bottles and they’d syphon from plastic barrels or from demijohns with the variety or village scrawled onto paper taped to the glass. For parties where we would need twenty liters or more, there was a winery at the very bottom of Vera with big stainless tanks which served us well until we met Gia. He lived a few steps below Shalva and distributed good table wine in aluminum kegs to various Tbilisi restaurants from his father-in-law’s winery in Kakheti. These were restaurants that used stemmed glasses, although the ritual was the same: fill, toast, drain, repeat.

We were lucky to have Gia as a neighbor. Good wine was for family and friends, difficult to buy. One evening before New Year’s, a friend came by with a five liter plastic jerry bottle of rkatsiteli. “Here,” he said. “This is my father’s wine from Kakheti. Please. Happy New Year.” I had never had better wine from a plastic jug and knew I’d never be able to buy it, let alone ask him to sell it. I’d have to go to Kakheti and be his guest if I wanted to drink it.

Serendipity and Putin’s mineral water and wine embargo in 2006 set off a chain of events that shook 100 years of Soviet and post-Soviet mold off Georgia’s wine culture. While big wineries, known commonly as factories, upped their game to sell on competitive markets, a small group of natural winemakers tapped into what was becoming a global trend. Later, when archeologists discovered the earliest traces of winemaking in Kvemo Kartli, Georgia had the best story to tell: 8000 vintages, the kvevri (qvevri), and amber wine (no, not orange).

By 2010, Vinotheca, the first legitimate wine shop, opened in Tbilisi’s Old Town. The same year, the Georgian Wine Association was established and with it, the New Wine Festival, the first showcase of quality bottled wine from across the country. People began to swirl, sniff and clink without the obligation to make a speech first. It was okay to have just a glass, to not have anything in particular to celebrate. The country with the oldest history of winemaking was starting to catch up with the rest of the world.

For the next several years wine shops and bars began to pop up everywhere, except in Vera, even after the high-end boutique Rooms Hotel opened in 2014 and the neighborhood began to gentrify. We waited four more years before Sulico Wine Bar arrived but we still had to travel to other neighborhoods to pick a bottle off a shelf for a normal retail price.

One day I was walking my dog Ramzes around the hood and saw a sign hanging from a red brick building. Wine Boutique. Could it be? I walked in and low and behold, the shelves were stocked with mostly independent natural family wines. A man with a voice like chacha filtered through a broken shot glass asked, “Can I help you?”

Giorgi Kbilashvili, better known as “Kicha,” survived a rough and tumble 1990s Tbilisi childhood through brains and moxie. With street smart instincts and inherent doggedness he opened Wine Boutique seven years ago in Upper Vera when it was very much a local’s neighborhood and foot traffic was mostly limited to the buzzier streets several blocks below.

Wine Boutique is not just a shop, but a social center for wine lovers. Wine makers, sommeliers and importers host tasting events, New York native Marco North dazzles guests with popup pairing dinners, friends stop by, uncork bottles and pour generously. At Kicha’s, people are strangers only once.

In Georgia, wine is a birthright. “I’ve been drinking wine all my life,” Kicha laughs. But as the culture has evolved, so has his passion. Several years ago, he began producing wine with his friend Giorgi Kirkitadze (K&K’s Krakhuna rocks - think apricot, quince, honey and a bit of skin contact to fill its body) and now produces other varieties with other wine makers.

Kicha with winemakers Gio Malatsidze and Giorgi Kirkitadze.

There has never been been a more exciting time to discover and experience the marvel of Georgian wine and in a city of wine shops, now in every neighborhood, you can’t go wrong in my new watering hole. Every time I’m here, there is a new label tempting me to try. Or should I go with something I know and love? Either way, if I sit down for a glass, I know what’s coming because you can never just have one. There is your other leg to consider, and next is the holy trinity.

Wine Boutique

17 Anastasia Eristav-Khoshtaria St., Tbilisi

+995 577 72 72 77

 Hours: Sun to Thurs. 1-11 pm

Fri & Sat 1-12 am