This transcript is from a Nate Buchanan travel vlog titled “WINE WAS INVENTED HERE (Signagi) Country of GEORGIA” (YouTube). In this segment the hosts drive into the Georgian countryside, get lost en route to a hilltop fortress, and after two hours arrive at a guest house where they are offered biscuits, figs/honey and coffee. They introduce Signagi as a regional wine hub and describe reservations made for winery lunches/dinners. The hosts taste local wines (including an amber-style qvevri-made wine buried in clay pots) and sample regional dishes (eggplant with cilantro, mushrooms) while noting tourist infrastructure limits (transportation, bookings) and lighthearted local interactions.
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Oh, my God.
What was that?
It's really quaint and quiet here.
All right, today is day three in Georgia. After two days of exploring the city of Tbwisi and after what feels like calling every single rental car company in.
The city and train, we explored every option.
We basically spent the last 24 hours trying to figure out transportation for the next week, but we finally managed to sort a rental car, and we are about to head into the countryside.
My seat was soaking wet, so. All right.
This is not going to be a healthy drive for me. I'm sitting with all of the snacks.
We're about an hour into the drive, and we thought we would make the most of the freedom that we have with our new rental car and go try to find this fortress that sits on top of a hill somewhere back there. But we found ourselves on a really rough gravel road in our Toyota Corolla, and it was either turn around or ford the river. Oh, we have no clue where we are.
I think we'll make it up there.
Okay, we've given up. We're not going to the top of the hill.
After our first hour of driving in Georgia, we've learned that lanes are kind of just suggestions. It's pretty much every man for himself on the road. And they. They sell a lot of watermelons here.
Charlie's getting right in as we're passing this guy.
Cobblestone's our favorite. Just meta Giorgi 16. Yeah, I don't think it's this far down.
Hey. No, we've left the road.
Did she send a path?
No. We are so lost.
And these roads are so skinny.
I'm just time to take you on.
A tour of the town. On the map that shows the tunnel.
Side of the road. Did he mud flower?
So you're thinking left or right here?
Oh, we can't go left. We've done that a thousand times.
But you don't. Okay.
This straight, I reckon somewhere up along here on the left. So this is where we tried.
Oh, it looks good.
Yeah. Pictures of wine.
Maybe it's this big one. Oh, in like the center of up to the left. We're just getting further away from it on the map.
Apple map.
I mean, the pin's just sitting in the middle of nowhere.
I'm in the middle of the road.
Stop.
Oh, geez. This is fun.
I feel like we need to turn around.
I would agree with that.
Well, it turns out that's not a hotel. There's number four.
Surely we're not out here.
Oh, this could be it.
Well, we're going towards the pin on the map.
We've been going towards that pin. We've been on the pin multiple times.
This looks like the gate. That's it. We found it.
I had all the doubt in the world. We can just park here.
Oh, why not?
Oh, fantastic.
After two hours of driving, many, many wrong turns later, we have finally made it to our guest house, and we've been greeted with biscuits and what we think is figs and honey. She's so nice.
And she's making coffee.
Dini mat.
So we are in the town of Signagi, which is, like, the main wine hub of Georgia, and we thought we should come here because Georgia actually claims to have invented wine thousands of years ago.
So today's agenda is eating and tasting wines. We've made reservations for lunch and dinner at two different wineries in town, and they're like the two places that you have to go when you come here.
We usually don't make reservations at places, but we've learned that if you want to do anything in Georgia, that's, like, one of the main tourist things to do. You need a reservation or you need to book it way ahead of time. I think Georgia's in this, like, interesting part of its development where it's, like, kind of hitting the tourist map, and a lot of people are wanting to come here, but the infrastructure isn't quite there yet.
They're just not quite ready for us yet.
Super hard for us to get a rental car. We weren't able to get the train that we wanted to to go to Arminia. We weren't able to get the place that we wanted to stay at tonight. I mean, it's been, like, rough to travel the past couple days.
It really has. Like, a lot of things we wanted to do have been unavailable, but at.
The same time, it's worked out. We've had a great time.
Let's go eat.
Maybe we'll have the 2016 chin.
Thank you.
Lovely.
It's quite sweet.
Ooh, it is sweet. I like it. We just have sweet ones.
Not sweet.
No.
Tastes sweet to me.
It's a lot less harsh than the ones we've been having.
Much less harsh. It doesn't burn on the way back down.
Yeah.
It's actually really delightful.
Like, it just makes me want to go skip through a field of butterflies. Ever since we've been in Georgia, pretty much every day, something kind of goes wrong or doesn't go as planned. We've had a great time, but we made this reservation, and we show up to do a wine tasting. And the chef comes out, and he's like, you can't do a tasting. The sommelier is not here. So we asked if we could taste some wines, and he said, you should just buy a bottle. So we did, and it's fine. But he told us that he went mushroom picking this morning. So we ordered some mushrooms, and then he just said he would suggest everything else that we should eat. So he's brought us some bread, a beautiful tomato salad with onions, and wine that they made here. It doesn't even have a label.
Oh, I thought it had something written on it. Thank you.
The reason that it's amber is because they make it in these clay pots and bury them in the ground down in the basement. And it is super yummy. This is the best wine we've had here so far.
Easily.
This is bloody good.
Bloody good.
I know these eggplants don't look super beautiful, but I am 100% certain this is the best thing that I put in my mouth. Since we came to Georgia, we haven't had cilantro in months. And it is just covered in a blanket of cilantro and soaked with chunks of garlic with a little bit of chili on top.
Oh, my gosh.
This is like one of those foods that I don't even want to start eating it because I already don't want.
It to be over.
You mean because you'd be polite and you'd wait for everyone else to start eating Also that it's served up and healed to you.
You're welcome.
Tell you what it's like eating with heathens.
On our way home, we found another winery called two years ago together. So we were having a proper tasting.
Here with bread and cheese, skateboarding on the river. We say, galmar Jos. Galmar Jos. Galmar Jos, Jos Jos.
Okay, everybody say hello.
Hello.
Hello.
See every day.
Okay.
Oh, gosh. Just keep God's sake.
Senggi, sengagi.
Signagi.
All I have is this.
Too much.
Thank you.
A statue of a man riding a donkey is the number five thing to do on TripAdvisor in Signagi. All right, mark that off the list.
Care.
I don't want to touch it.
I don't want to touch.
Stop.
Well, I've been in the art gallery, which is fantastic.
Yeah, yeah. Didn't we already go in there?
Yeah, look, it's the same thing, but you had a few wines. It gets.
