Sighnaghi

The ridge above the Alazani was settled long before the present town, and a medieval fortress stood in the area, but Sighnaghi as it exists now dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. King Erekle II of Kartli-Kakheti had a wall built around the hill in the 1760s to shelter the people of the surrounding villages from raids by Dagestani and other bands that crossed the Caucasus into the valley. The wall, with towers set along it, enclosed far more ground than the town ever filled, so that livestock and refugees could be taken inside; the name is usually derived from a Turkic word for a place of shelter.

Under Russian rule from the early nineteenth century the town became a district centre, with Armenian and Georgian merchant families trading wine, carpets and leather, and it acquired the two-storey balconied houses that still line its streets. The painter Niko Pirosmani was born in 1862 in the nearby village of Mirzaani, and the region's tavern culture shaped his work.

The Soviet period left Sighnaghi a quiet administrative town living from wine and agriculture, and by the 1990s many of its houses were decaying. In the 2000s the government carried out a large restoration programme, repaving streets, rebuilding facades, restoring the wall and turning the town into a showpiece of the Kakheti wine route. The rebuilding was criticised by some conservationists as too heavy, but it brought visitors, guesthouses and money back to a town that had been emptying. Sighnaghi is also known in Georgia as the city of love, and many couples come to the town to marry.

The town's identity is bound to wine. Almost every household in the district has a marani, a cellar with qvevri, large clay vessels buried to the neck, in which grapes ferment with their skins and stalks — a method inscribed by UNESCO on its list of intangible cultural heritage. The rtveli harvest in September and October is the high point of the year, when families gather to pick and press, and guests are drawn into the work and the meals that follow.

The supra, the formal Georgian feast, is taken seriously in Kakheti. A tamada directs the toasts through a fixed sequence, the table answers each one, and polyphonic singing, another UNESCO-listed tradition, often accompanies the eating. Kakhetians have a reputation elsewhere in Georgia for generosity and plain speaking, and hospitality towards strangers is regarded as an obligation rather than a courtesy.

Religious life centres on Bodbe, the convent below the town where Saint Nino, who converted the Georgian kingdom in the fourth century, is buried; her feast days bring pilgrims from across the country. Pirosmani's naive paintings of feasts, animals and shopkeepers are the region's best-known contribution to Georgian art, and copies of them decorate cellars and restaurants throughout the valley. Carpet weaving, once a local trade, survives mainly as a craft sold to visitors.

Sighnaghi itself is one of the smallest towns in Georgia, and several thousand more people live in the surrounding municipality of villages and in Tsnori on the valley road below. Many households combine a small vineyard or orchard with work in tourism, and the number of guesthouses, restaurants and wine cellars per resident is unusual for a Georgian town of this size.

Agriculture remains the base of the wider economy: grapes above all, along with wheat, sunflowers, fruit and livestock in the Alazani plain. Wineries range from family cellars selling a few hundred litres to substantial commercial producers, and the harvest sets the rhythm of the year. Seasonal work, low wages and the departure of young people for Tbilisi or abroad are familiar problems here as in much of rural Georgia, though restoration and tourism have slowed the decline.

The day begins early with vineyard and garden work and pauses in the heat of the afternoon. Shops, the museum and the square are busy in the middle of the day when buses and tour groups arrive from Tbilisi; in the evening the town empties and belongs to residents again, with families out on the rim looking at the mountains. Water supply, winter mist and the state of the roads to the villages are common complaints.

Kakhetian cooking is meatier and less spicy than the food of western Georgia, and Sighnaghi eats what the valley produces. Mtsvadi, chunks of pork or lamb skewered and grilled over dried vine cuttings, is the centrepiece of a feast, served with raw onion and pomegranate seeds. Chakapuli, lamb or veal stewed with tarragon, spring onion and sour green plums, appears in spring, and chanakhi, lamb baked in a clay pot with aubergine, tomato and herbs, in colder months.

Starters are vegetarian and walnut-heavy: pkhali, chopped spinach, beetroot or cabbage ground with walnuts, garlic and coriander; badrijani nigvzit, fried aubergine rolled around walnut paste; and lobio, beans stewed with herbs and eaten with cornbread. Cheese from the valley, hot shotis puri baked against the wall of a clay tone oven, and khinkali, pleated dumplings of spiced meat and broth, complete the table. In autumn churchkhela is made everywhere: walnuts threaded on string and dipped repeatedly in thickened grape juice until they set.

The wine is the point of the place. Saperavi, a dark-skinned red grape, and the white Rkatsiteli are the mainstays, and the named appellations of the valley — Tsinandali, Mukuzani, Napareuli and the semi-sweet Kindzmarauli — come from vineyards within sight of the town. Amber wine, made by fermenting white grapes on their skins in qvevri, is the traditional style that has drawn international attention, and chacha, a clear spirit distilled from the pressings, ends the meal.