Sighnaghi Wine Tour with Eat This! Tours: What to Expect

One of Georgia’s appeals lies in its 8,000-year-old winemaking traditions, and there is no better place to experience them than the Kakheti wine region, with hundreds of thousand square meters of lush vineyards and a wide variety of grapes. Therefore, I advise joining a Kakheti wine tour for a truly unique and amazing experience. This detailed post reviews a Sighnaghi wine tour with Eat This! Tours I took a few months back. 

That being said, this post provides my honest review of the company and the tour, what to expect, and a few tips on the Kakheti wine region and its wines. 

Truthfully, I am not a huge fan of organized tours, and I prefer to do things independently. However, some places and occasions are worth experiencing through a tour. Hence, I periodically book them and have my own way of researching and choosing. I outline my personal tips in my ultimate guide to picking the best wine tours in Georgia as a local.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy something through them—at no extra cost to you. It helps support my blog and lets me share real, first-hand travel tips. Learn more

Overview of Kakheti wine region

Located east of Georgia, Kakheti makes around 70% of Georgia’s wine. The area is informally divided into several sub-regions and numerous microregions, resulting in a diverse array of microclimates where a wide assortment of grape varieties grow. 

Key areas include the towns and villages of Sighnaghi, Telavi, Gurjaani, Tsinandali, Kvareli, and Sagarejo, which line the banks of the Alazani River as it streams from the Caucasus Mountains to the Mingecevir reservoir in Azerbaijan.

Traditional Kakhetian winemaking utilizes clay vessels known as Qvevri (read my post on how gigantic Qvevris are crafted). These pots are buried underground and naturally filter and age the wine, keeping the seeds, skins, and stems. Therefore, this ancient winemaking process has been included as UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2013. 

That said, not all wines in Kakheti (or elsewhere in Georgia) are made in Qvevri. Some are made (or aged) in oak barrels or stainless steel tanks. However, good wine tours in Kakheti and Georgia will focus on Qvevri wines and small artisanal family-run wineries. 

Disclaimer: My tour was hosted by the company, but in the spirit of transparency, I emphasize that the following review reflects my genuine and unbiased opinions and recommendations. Rest assured, every word shared accurately represents my personal experience.

About Eat This! Tours

Eat This! Tours are owned by my friends Tommo and Megsy, an Australian-British couple who have lived in Georgia for over five years. Over this time, they have become experts in Georgian food and wine and eventually founded a company offering premium wine and food tours. 

The company focuses on small, locally owned wineries, which they personally scout before including in the itinerary. They strive to provide authentic experiences to their guests by involving meetings with winemakers, connecting local families, and tasting homemade food. 

While the emphasis is on the wine, history, making process, and wine tasting, the tour also includes a bit of sightseeing. Their tours are fully inclusive; you can eat and drink as much as you want. 

For my readers, Eat This! Tours kindly offered a 5% discount on all their packages. Use code RFD5 at checkout to apply the discount. 

What to expect at the Sighnaghi Wine Tour

Eat This! runs two Sighnaghi wine tours: during winter (Dec-Mar) and summer (Apr-Nov). While the itinerary and wineries don’t differ, the only difference is with the cuisine—in winter, they provide more winter and Christmas-appropriate meals, including mulled wine and Gozinaki (a Georgian Christmas/New Year snack made from honey and walnuts), which you won’t get in summer. 

The tour includes visiting three wineries, a short sightseeing of Sighnaghi city, and a culmination of a Supra (traditional Georgian dinner) with a local family. As mentioned earlier, the tour is inclusive with plenty of food and wine. 

I joined the winter wine tour in February, but if you are in Georgia in the summer and early autumn months, book their Vine and Villages Sighnaghi wine tour. 

Before I explain the itinerary and what to expect, I want to highlight that the wineries I went to are subject to change depending on their availability. You can always inquire about which ones they plan to take you to. 

After picking everyone up at their accommodations, we headed to Kakheti and our first winery. Our guide and driver, Levan, a professional tour guide for over ten years and a trained sommelier, gave an introduction to Georgian wine history, its techniques, Kakheti in general, and the wine industry in the past and present as he drove. 

Giuaani Winery

Our first stop was one of my favorite wineries near Tbilisi – Giuaani in the village of Manavi. I’ve been there a few times for lunch and even spent a peaceful weekend in their hotel. Read my detailed review of the enterprise. 

This family-run winery, hotel, and restaurant offers a high-quality service, delicious food, and wine. This is the biggest winery you’ll visit on this Sighnaghi wine tour. 

Their sommelier, Giorgi, is always there and happy to show you around the winery, explain the exact process of their winemaking, and walk you through the tanks, Qveveri room, and oak barrels. 

Giuanni produces both traditional Qvevri and European-style (without skin contact) wines, as well as chacha (a strong Georgian spirit and a byproduct of winemaking). 

On our visit, we were lucky to see the first opening of one of the Qvevris and even try the freshest and newest wine! 

After the tour, you are guided to the restaurant for a ‘wine brunch,’ which involves meals from their menu perfectly paired with four different wines. Of course, Giorgi leads tasting and explains each wine and food pairing. 

We had classical dry white (Manavi), an amber (Rkatsiteli), a dry red (Saperavi), and semi-sweet white (Tvishi) wines. 

Pkhali (vegetables with walnut paste) appetizers, chicken salad, and a plate of cheese, toasted tone bread, and churchkhela were already set on the table. Then, other meals started coming as the tasting progressed. 

We tried Kubdari, a Svanetian meat pie, Kashlama, a traditional Kakhetian dish of boiled beef with celery stem puree and garlic cream; and my favorite of Giuaani’s desserts – buffalo yogurt with seasonal berries. 

As always, the food at Giuaani is delicious, and this time was no exception. The amount of wine given to our table was absolutely insane. When Giorgi finished the tasting, the bottles were left on our table for us to finish! 

A mini tour of Sighnaghi

The next stop was a short walk in the picturesque town of Sighnaghi. As the tour concentrates on food and wine with a visit to cellars, your time in the city is limited. This also depends on the group and the time spent in Giuaani. 

The tour was not rushed, which we all appreciated very much. Obviously, our group took its time to enjoy delicious wine and food, but if you want to explore Sighnaghi, I highly recommend coming back here as a day trip from Tbilisi or even spending a night and enjoying a gorgeous sunset/sunrise. Read my guide to the best things to do in Sighnaghi.

Kerovani Winery

Then, it was time for another small family-run Sighnaghi winery, Kerovani, which produces natural wines. We met with cousins Ilya and Archil, who run the business. They gave us a tour of their small wine cellar and explained how they make organic natural wines. 

Like the first winery, we were treated to four different wines for our tasting, accompanied by plates of snacks and appetizers, including Pkhali, cheese, and jonjoli pickle (which resembles a bladdernut flower). 

We tried their Rkatsiteli dry white, Kesane, a dry, unfiltered amber from the Rkatsiteli grape, dry red Saperavi, and their Pet Nat (abbreviated from ‘petillant naturel’), a natural sparkling wine made with as little intervention as possible. Nothing is added during the process, and nothing is filtered out at the end. 

Kerovani is a small winery that prioritizes quality over quantity, which is felt in every sip of their natural wines. Since we were the only guests, we talked with Ilya and Archil for a while about their winery and future plans.

Burjanadzes’ Wine Cellar

The culmination of the evening is the third wine tasting in another small winery, followed by a family Supra at Burjanadzes’ Wine Cellar in their own house! 

As a Georgian, I am not new to a Supra, and there is no point in counting how many Supras I’ve attended or hosted throughout my life. However, if I put myself in the shoes of a foreigner (which I often do thanks to this blog as I sometimes re-discover my own country), this is truly a magnificent experience that shouldn’t be missed! 

After greeting us in their garden, Bacho, a young winemaker producing biodynamic Qvevri wines, led us to a small table set outside full of his wine and appetizers. Like other places, Bacho introduced his wine quickly, made a heartfelt toast, and offered us chacha. 

As it was winter, his mother, Maia, called us to the kitchen to show us how she makes the Gozinaki, the honey and walnut snack I mentioned earlier. She even poured hot mulled wine into our cups. Bacho’s father, Zaza, was on duty to grill Mtsvadi (meat on a skewer) in their courtyard. 

This was the beginning of the most unique experience you might have on a Sighnaghi wine tour. When we were invited to the living room, the table was already set with piles of Georgian food, jugs of wine, and a bottle of chacha. And Bacho’s grandmother, Darejan, joined us at the table once we sat down. 

The following two hours are the most eventful as you experience typical, authentic, Supra like Georgians do, where Bacho was tamada (a toastmaster), who guided the evening with philosophical and heartwarming toasts as we drank unlimited amber wine and savored Maia’s delicious homemade food. 

Like any typical Supra, the dinner table was filled with kachapuri, chicken, eggplant with walnut sauce, fried potatoes, cucumber and tomato salad, a cheese plate, tone bread, assorted pickles, Mtsvadi, and other Georgian food. Later, Maia brought a black bean stew with tone bread boiled inside the stew, which I hadn’t tried before. 

And if you think that’s it, you are very wrong, I am afraid. After a few toasts comes the beautiful singing of Bacho of Georgian polyphonic songs, accompanied by his grandmother and father. When we thought nothing else would come up, Zaza sat at the piano and gave us a fantastic performance. Later, we even heard a father-son duo on the piano, which was phenomenal.  

The whole evening was unbelievably touching and emotional, and I am sure it will be the most memorable day of your life, as it was for me—sitting down with a humble family offering their home, food, and wine to the guests is what makes Georgian hospitality so unique.