“Georgia Belongs on Every Food-and-Wine Lover’s Radar” – “Virtuoso, The Magazine” publishes an article with such a title.

“Into the Caucasus Mountains for homemade dumplings and legendary wine.

I’ve traveled to more than 80 countries, and I’ve seen some memorable peaks, from Bhutan’s Himalaya to Peru’s ice-capped ranges. But nothing prepared me for the beauty of Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains and bucolic alpine valleys. Before I arrived in the small country (it’s about half the size of the U.S. state of Georgia) that sits at the intersection of Europe and Asia, I didn’t know too much about it, besides that I liked the Georgian food I’d sought out at restaurants at home in New York City. What I learned: For fans of big adventure, hearty food and wine, and lush, green gorges dotted with beautiful little churches, Georgia is dream-trip material.

Last year, I crisscrossed the Greater Caucasus range over ten days, logging more than 750 miles and reaching elevations of 9,000 feet to visit the watchtower-topped villages, centuries-old wine caves, and family-owned kitchens that made me fall for this under-the-radar country.

The mountain town of Kazbegi, a three-hour drive north of Tbilisi (Georgia’s capital city), is a popular winter ski retreat. I was there in summer, though, so after watching paragliders fill the sky above the Aragvi River, I settled in with a glass of saperavi wine and a bowl of chikhirtma (chicken and herb soup) at a lodge overlooking the fourteenth-century Gergeti Trinity Church. After a couple of days getting acquainted with the Swiss-doppelgänger Juta Valley, I wound my way to the opposite side of Chaukhi Pass for a stay in Khevsureti, home of the medieval Khevsur warriors, whose stories still echo through the Shatili fortress complex.

While Georgia’s landscapes and villages could have kept me on epic photography quests for weeks, its liquid assets intrigued me too. Archaeologists have found evidence of winemaking in a Neolithic village in the eastern Kakheti region that dates to 6000 BC, and the country wears this discovery with pride. Many winemakers still age their reds and ambers the old-school Georgian way: by fermenting skin-contact grapes underground in clay vessels called qvevri. Artisans hand-sculpt and fire these vessels, which can weigh nearly 2,000 pounds each and take a full week to fire. I sampled khikhvi and mtsvane varietals with winemaker Shota Lagazidze at the Lagazi Wine Cellar, dove into the wine cave at Winery Khareba, and sipped tsitska and rkatsiteli at Okro’s Wines, with its views over the village of Sighnaghi. There, John and Jane Okruashvili produce some of the country’s finest organic, biodynamic vintages, practicing winemaking traditions that date back millennia.

For my Georgian finale, I headed into Tusheti, a remote northeast-highland region reached via a precipitous, unpaved mountain-pass road that’s accessible for only a sliver of the year. (Pro tip: Arrive by helicopter for a smoother ride, and saddle up to see its alpine villages on horseback.) In a country of secrets, it felt like the best kept. Most Tush people only live there during the summer, to graze their sheep or host visitors in solar-powered guesthouses. At one of them, just outside the village of Omalo, I learned to make the country’s famous khinkali: aromatic, meat-filled soup dumplings. Creating the perfect dumpling-wrapper fold with my fat fingers still eludes me, but Georgia’s allure does not”, - reads the article.