{"id":42753,"date":"2026-09-19T17:03:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T16:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flavorsandsenses.com\/?p=42753"},"modified":"2026-09-19T17:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T16:03:03","slug":"georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flavorsandsenses.com\/en\/georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgia: The Cup and the Sword"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sameba<\/a>
Sameba Cathedral in Tbilisi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I arrived in Tbilisi halfway through the week, which on a press trip is like walking into a cinema after the film has started, with colleagues talking about dinners I hadn’t eaten, jokes I hadn’t heard, and tastings in a wine region I had never set foot in. On little sleep, or none at all, and before I had even opened my case, they put me in a van and drove me out to Mtskheta\"\"<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The old capital has an eleventh-century cathedral, Svetitskhoveli<\/em>, and a peculiar origin story: the medieval chronicle has it that a Jew from Mtskheta<\/em> bought Christ’s robe from a Roman soldier and carried it home, where his sister, Sidonia, died the moment she touched it, gripping the cloth so tightly that they buried her still holding it. A cedar grew over her grave, and from that cedar came the column that gave the cathedral its name, the “pillar of life”<\/strong>, today sheltered beneath a seventeenth-century canopy covered in frescoes that tell the whole thing in pictures. The cross of Saint Nino, who converted Georgia in the fourth century, is made of vine shoots bound with her own hair. In this part of the world, faith and the vine come from the same raw material<\/strong>, and I would remember as much later that afternoon, a few minutes down the road.<\/p>\n