We Visited Georgia's Most Unique Hotel 🇬🇪 (Full Tour, Cooking Masterclass, Local Wine Cellar)

Today we'll be staying at the most unique hotel in the country of Georgia. A tiny crafty house which is simply an earthware vessel made with clay for fermenting wine. What is the bodyguard here? He looks like a superman. Also today we're gonna learn how to prepare traditional Georgian dishes. Oh you lost it. I lost it. No. Fail. We're gonna go to local family to see how they make wine and also try traditional method of drinking from the horn. Are you ready baby? Ready. Okay let's go. Let's go. So for this car we actually rented for $27 per day but initially the car that we got was Ford Fiesta but yesterday the owner actually messaged me and told me that hey Justin your Ford Fiesta got a crash and I'm gonna upgrade you to another car. So now we've got the Hyundai which is a lot bigger car and also very modern as well. So I think this one typically will be around $30 but still compared to other European countries car rental here in Georgia is still relatively cheap I would say. Our car's so dirty now. We're on gravel road. In Australia my brother would kill me like after a hike and the car looks like it's on gravel road. That looks so dirty I can't even see the rear window now. Don't drive so close to him. So slow. Just now we almost crashed our car just because some driver in Georgia stopped super super fast. It was super close. Is he okay? Yeah it was super last minute break just then. That's something you need to look out for when you're driving in Georgia. For one drivers here they are relatively quite dangerous they speed a lot and also the roads here when you're outside the city it gets really challenging to drive as well and thirdly sometimes the road signs they're all in Georgian so you really need to use your imagination to guess what it is. But yeah I'm just very happy that it didn't crash here. If you watch our channel long enough then you know I'm the type of person who likes to be prepared whenever I go travel especially on roads like this where many things can go wrong. That's why I'm so excited to partner with Safety Wing. Our go-to travel insurance provider. Because it is so affordable it's only $45 for 28 days and you can sign up for minimum five days and cancel anytime without giving any reasons. It also has travel coverage for example loss check baggage, travel interruptions, travel delays and also 24-7 support team. I think it's really good insurance especially because we already have coverage for our car and now with this insurance we have coverage for our health which is more important. So yeah if you're interested in buying the Nomad insurance from Safety Wing and want to support our channel then make sure to head over to use our link in description. Wow free roaming horses. Wow it's so beautiful. Wow. First time for me to see horses not in a farm. Not gonna lie. So majestic. Before this road trip we actually went on a small road trip but we didn't drive. We actually took a taxi to an area called Kudaro which is a mountain region and when we're driving the view was so beautiful. All the orange, yellow and it's kind of my first time seeing these colourful colours. Just because you know in Hong Kong in Australia it doesn't really get too cold or too hot. It has autumn but the leaves are not as colourful and vibrant like here. But already after one week it's nothing else. Yeah now after one week everything is dirty. Yeah we realized coming to Georgia at a wrong season I would say. Better time it's winter or summer. But anyway we're here so we want to get the most out of it. In Georgia everywhere it's a broken cars. I don't know why they keep it like this. Broken roads too. Now we're in a village village area. No chicken! Suicide chicken. See? How can we drive? But our navigation brings us here. A little bit confusing but now I guess we finally found our right way in. This is not this road. The hotel told me to go a certain way because the google maps location is not updated. It's a rather new hotel. Oh no I'm gonna go back down. Welcome to village life. This is like my grandmother's dacha, garden house. For me it's super super typical roads. Wow what is the bodyguard here? He looks like a superman. Are you ready? Yeah let's go. Our bodyguard helping us. Yeah we've got superman. This is probably the hotel I'm excited the most in my whole life just because it is so interesting looking. We'll show you in a bit why but first let's check in. Hello. How are you? Very good. Wow so beautiful. Thank you. So we dropped down our bags and now it's time to give you guys a tour around this hotel. Ladies first. Thank you thank you. This is the lobby reception area and it's very spacious. Hello again. Hello. If you pass through the corridor this is the main bar area. Vibing music, glass of wine, cocktail, they serve it all here. This right here is actually a heater pool so now currently it's not being heated up just because I think no guests are using it and also it's being late. But usually you can actually use this especially now it's 15 degrees. I can't wait to go in for a dip. Just heated pool. It's like a hot bath and I just realized on this side there are some table tennis tables as well. Run. You get the point. There's table tennis here and let me show you guys why this hotel is so special. And of course the highlight of this hotel, it's a hidden gem, is this is Kvevri houses. That looks like a vessel and usually it's a traditional Georgian Kvevri that they're usually making wine. Today we're gonna live there. We still didn't see room. Just a little bit. Oh let's let's see first impression. Come on. That's not a room. Oops. This is our room. Design of this room it looks super interesting. Welcome to our home. For next three days. Nice and spacious bed. Some small table with phone. On that side we have a TV if we want to watch Netflix or YouTube or something else. And here area with tea, coffee, water and coffee machine which is so important in tomorrow morning. And also mini mini fridge. Oh inside a lot of snacks. They're so generous. It's not generous. You need to pay for it. And this side bathroom. So here we have towels, shampoo, body wash, everything that we need, toilet and shower. That's so nice. Oh I really love it. Gonna be good experience. Can you imagine how they build this? How someone can have idea to make like cravery house? I think now more than ever I actually want to drink wine from a cravery. I think this might just be one of our best hotel stays in a while. Just because this place it's so peaceful. Yeah this place it's so peaceful. So beautiful. Also because of this hotel it's a rather new hotel. That's why not a lot of people actually know about this place. It's newly built this year. So we're giving this secret information to you guys. So you can check this out when you... Yes secret information for you guys. So you can check it out next time you come to Georgia. Good morning guys. Good morning. Welcome to day two. Today it's a big day because we'll be learning how to make kinkali and kachapuri. But first we need breakfast. And this breakfast will be for us first time when we're really trying Georgian traditional breakfast. It's so interesting how it looks like. Yeah okay let's go. So for breakfast today we're having a mix of Georgian and also western style breakfast. For example, from what I understand from where she's just standing, he actually said there's not a lot of dishes that scream out Georgian breakfast like this. That's why they usually have potato and a lot of cheese. So we've got cheese platter. We've got some ham over here as well. And mix with western style breakfast which is sausage and bacon, omelette eggs and you've got some muffins over there as well. And this bread right here is not just plain bread. This one actually has some sort of Georgian spices and I believe this one is bread with olives. So overall very filling breakfast. Lots of cheese, lots of carbs. I think that's traditional Georgian breakfast. When it comes to the most iconic Georgian dishes it has to be the kinkali and kachapuri. And this hotel actually also offers cooking classes. And today we're going to learn from the masters how to cook kinkali and kachapuri traditional way which is wood fire outdoors. Because we're cooking outside they already chopped up some woods here for the wood fire and it's already burning hot right here. And I believe they also prepare some ingredients outside as well. Because we're cooking kinkali I think there is some sort of mint product flour. And over here there are some special herbs that we'll be learning about later. Personally I love cooking so this is exciting for me. I don't like cooking but anyway this is so exciting for me because it's interesting how to cook kachapuri in like traditional way. Yeah this kind of reminds me of village life. People cooking kinkali, kachapuri, wood fire outdoors. Like babushka preparing. Babushka means grandma in Russian right? Yeah today I will be your babushka. You can see in the background here Alina is just chatting with the chef now. But because I think most of the Georgian people here they actually don't speak a lot of English. That's why I believe this cooking class is majority going to be in Russian. So Alina is going to do the work translating for me later. He said we won't put kinza inside kinkali. Amazing that's first step for good kinkali. They say usually in traditional recipe they don't have kinza in kinkali. It's only in big cities like Tbilisi. I don't know why but I noticed in Tbilisi every single dish they add heaps of coriander. I don't know why. They add so much coriander and we don't like coriander. For them coriander is like a garnish. Like an onion. Like a spring onion in Asian cuisine. How do you feel? Again bakery is not my strong suit. It's good. It's okay. Good? Okay put here. Put one spoon. Need swap. What? This doesn't look so good. He did so perfectly. Now so thick I feel like. Press. More harder. Okay. This one need like turn like this. Okay and then I break this up. This is expectation. This is reality. This looks really ugly but now I learned the hard way. Anyway now I'll eat this one. It will taste extra delicious when you handmade it yourself. Alina is very good at making clay. So I'm sure she has good experience with this. I remember she started making some clay toy and I got so impatient. Is it similar to Russian dumplings pelmeni like this? Yeah you just make the same but kinkali is bigger. I'm hungry by the way. One side no flour. Yeah only this side like this. Because I used to cooking Chinese dumplings usually and it's a little bit different way. Oh you lost it. I lost it. No. I mean yours is beautiful. Yeah. I think. It's good? The secret judgment. Wow Alina did this professionally I feel like. Right into the hot water. So now the dumplings is in the hot water. It's going to take five minutes until it's fully cooked. And we're going to taste those juicy dumplings. Hopefully the juice doesn't leak out. And after that we'll cook kachapuri. And also there is this very unique snack that we saw in Georgian market. It's okay it's okay. Okay anyway. So this snack right here that appears to be like a Chinese sausage. It's actually not sausage it's called churchkhela. Basically it's made with these nuts right here. And we're going to learn how to make it into these beautiful things. This is for the thingy. Wow. I put inside too? No wait wait wait. Ah I see. Very nice. Basically it's just to cover the entire chain of nuts with this paste right here. Grape paste. And this is white wine paste right? It is. Yes white wine. Wow beautiful. Wow. Look at that. Oh now there's some excess on top. Fail. No take in your hand yet. And then mix. Mix. Wow this looks amazing. This looks like putting caramel on the nuts but it's not caramel. Too much? Was it too much just now? Yeah a little bit. See how he's doing. Ah he's removing it. Removing the excess. Oh very beautiful. Okay we've got our reward here. Give it there. Okay good. That's so heavy. To describe this basically it has a very strong gummy texture this paste. That's why it's really hard to push. You're doing great. You got this. Yes it's so heavy. Wow beautiful. This is to sun dry them right? And it becomes harder. And also on the other side here our khinkalis are ready. He said try. Try okay. And they will bring now tissue. Tissue good. Yeah because usually you need to eat with hands. Flip. You drink the juice first and after that you eat khinkali. It's so good. Really? Oh so good. Taste this time is just right. Maybe I'm biased. Maybe because like we make this so it's extra delicious. But yeah it is so tasty this time. Because inside no coriander. Yep that's not the main thing. Inside no coriander. Gemlieli. Gemlieli delicious. Wow so juicy. Now I just drink the soup and now I'm gonna try beef. I think the dough now it's a little bit too thick. That's why it's easy to hold but actually it's hard to eat. I think it's a mixture inside that is very tasty. So tasty. Yeah the mixture is so good. Because they mix pork and beef and also they mix it with water to make it juicy. Personally I think I don't like it. I love it. I want to try this one. This is just now we make. This is churchilla. It's a grape paste. They say we can eat this just like this raw. I want to try how it looks like. It's sweet. It's like a jam on the way. It's like a jam grape jam. It's like a sweet fruity sticky paste I would say. I wouldn't say I like it but yeah it's okay. This one is traditional Georgian drink called chacha. Chacha made from grape from wine and it's 100% original. No chemical things. No something like sugar. And this is actually 40% alcohol so it's higher than vodka and tequila. So actually just now we already tried. I tried two shots. Alina tried a shot just because just now battery died on her phone. So we're gonna do a redemption now. I'm gonna drink this again. On the Georgian tradition they tell us that we need to drink three times three shots. So I call it chachacha not chacha. Chachacha because three times. Alina is drinking chacha. I'm drinking chachacha. So before we start drinking we need to say in Georgian. Who's Josh by the way? I think my mouth is super small. This I cannot drink it fully. You can. It's super spicy. It's like it's like burning my mouth now. Really? Yeah a little bit. Like I don't know for me it's stronger than water to be honest. To me this is so smooth. Vodka usually burns has this aftertaste but this one is just so smooth. Love it. This burns too. You know in Australia we do this song. We like to drink with Alina because she is our mate. When we drank with Alina she downed a drink in 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 0.5, 0.4, 0.3, 0.1, 0.09, 0.08, 0.04, 0.03, 0.00009. Someone will be drunk today. I have really good alcohol tolerance usually but I think this is a really good pair with traditional Georgian food. I think also maybe in winter if you drink this it actually keeps you warm as well. Okay let's do it. This one is more fluffy it feels like. It's more sticking to the roll because it's more cheese. He said because it's from milk yeah from milk from from cheese. Oh and then he's gonna put another dough inside. Okay and then fold it like a khinkali. Wow see it's so how do you describe this? Big khinkali. Yeah big khinkali. Oh okay exactly like a khinkali. BAM! Voila! All right pizza pizza. This is like the classic classic khachapuri right? Yeah it's a classic khachapuri. We have also the agar khachapuri as you know. Yes yes yes we always always eat agar khachapuri. Now we put the dough inside a hot pan and he already made a small hole and it's for the air to leak out so it doesn't puff up. And now we wait. Your first khachapuri in your life. Yes. Thank you. New cha-cha for you. This time cheese for you guys. So smooth. Really? Super smooth? Yeah so good. You even don't want to drink something after that? Yeah perfect so good. You're so strong. Thank you. Oh so good. Wow yeah it's beautiful. Are you okay? It's 40 degrees. Usually I drink one cup of wine and for me it's like enough. You mean 40 percent? Yes yes yes 40 percent. Okay anyway we've got our khachapuri here. This might not look like the ones that you looked online before because this is not the agarian but this classic khachapuri. So we're gonna have that now. Anyway yours is more juicy. So good. Super cheesy. Like I said before if you're eating khachapuri and you have lactose intolerance they're just gonna say to ER because it has so much cheese in there and it's so good. This is a much more filling version of pizza. Love it. Good? After cha-cha. Yeah so good yeah. Everything tastes better when you make it yourself. It is a very good cooking class I would say and also you have a lot of these food. It's my best cooking class. So far it's been my best cooking class. Georgi just was so nice and he was so patient even though we're just like messing around. But he was so nice and yeah wow just amazing yeah I'm just speechless right now. Guys don't worry I have first time seeing Justin drunk. I'm not drunk. You won't drink your wine? Wow this red wine is really good. It has that very fruity taste. This is really tasty. Maybe because you're drunk? Now we understand what a query is. That's why now we're actually going to a local wine cellar to taste authentic Georgian wine and also learn how they actually make it from growing the grapes to harvesting to how to process it. We're going to learn it all today. And rather than going to a big you know local winery we decided to go to a rather small local authentic farm wine cellar so that we have the full experience of how it's like. To be honest I'm already tired of drinking wine every day but Georgia it is what it is. Let's do it. Okay let's do it. Eika nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Alina. Hello. Oh my god so cute. Sausage dog. Lucky. Lucky nice to meet you. You're super cute. Three months. That's so cute Alina. That's so cute. The place we decided to visit this time is run by a very friendly and hospitable family. Introducing our hosts Vako and Eka and they're probably the most welcoming people we've ever met in Georgia. As soon as we arrived they started showing us the biggest cravery which is two meters tall and can hold up to 2000 liters of wine. Our soda Vako typically would climb down into the cravery and use this u-shaped antiseptic brush to clean the cravery. Natural antiseptic. Now it's full of wine and grape together skins and seeds. And continue fermentation process. We crushed this grape two weeks ago and it needs one more week. One more week. And in terms of the winemaking process after harvesting the grapes they would put the grapes in a cut out hazelnut tree that was imported from west Georgia and use the fruit to crush the grapes. The grape stomping process is an important part of Georgia's winemaking tradition. This is to prevent the grape seeds from breaking because otherwise the wine will be more sour and affects the overall taste. Just come out from this hole and roll to the inside. Once the grapes are crushed he will collect the juice, grape skins, seeds and throw everything into the cravery and let it ferment and once that's done he will then separate the juice from the seeds, grape skins and the remains are put into a cha-cha distiller to produce cha-cha. Cha-cha is a strong alcohol. Cha-cha? Yeah. Do most households actually make their own wine? Yes. Mostly every family make wine but not in Quarry because it's very difficult. Vako and Eka then showed us the 120 year old wine cellar and inside there are three smaller cravies that can hold up to 500, 400 and 300 litres. Because the cravies are non-removable and over 100 years old they really emphasise on the cleaning process and have different cleaning tools. These are actually cherry skins. They actually serve as antiseptic so usually after they finish making the wine they will use this to clean the cravies. So what they will do is they stick it to the bottom and they will just brush it like this and use it as antiseptics. After that they will actually use this two hand tool which is basically two sticks holding a bucket and they would put this down into the quarry and they will lift up the dirty water that they brush it off. And then basically Vako told me that he will take out the buckets one by one, one by one, one by one until at last he will actually taste the water. If it's like pure then he won't have any taste. Of course if it's dirty then he will taste the dirty water but he will make sure it is the cleanest when he pours the wine in. And the last tool we have here it looks like a cylinder. Basically this is for filtering the grapes. You would put this into the quarry and then as you picked it up then you will filter out all the grape excess here and the juice will remain inside. After the fermenting, aging of wine, also the filtering, they will actually put the wine in these huge bottles and apparently according to Vako what he told me is that usually in Georgian men they will drink the whole bottle. How many litres inside? Three litres. Three litres? Three litres. Can you drink three litres? It's normal size for one Caucasian man. For a Hong Kong man it will be like half the bottle I think. Wine from Kakheti is dangerous because climate here is more dry. That's why the grapes are typically sweeter, meaning high alcohol percentage. So it tastes a bit like a harmless sweet drink. So you every day drink one bottle? No, no, every day just sugar, just this. Welcome to Georgia. Thank you. So strong grape taste. Grapes, branches and we make barbecue, more tasty barbecue. This is complete. It looks like you vertical the fat like this. Yes, yes, yes. Again, this is certainly the kind of activity you try to avoid when you're drunk. Apparently in western region they're famous for the kachapuris but here from the eastern region of Kakheti they're actually famous for this kind of barbecue. And this one, it's a khurma. This one is a khurma, it's a fruit I've never seen or tried before. It looks like somewhat like a plum but it's orange in colour. But they grow it everywhere like here, it's a khurma tree. Baku actually just picked it from a tree just then. He actually climbed a ladder and just took it for us. Whoa, it's so sweet. It kind of reminds me of a texture of a melon. Also tastes a bit like a melon actually. It's so sweet. Makes it a very good fruit after food. Yeah, it's like a dessert almost. This is our tradition. We always say some toast and we drink wine. And first toast, I want to cheers to you, my guest. Welcome to Georgia. Thank you. Juicy. It's so good. Amazing. I think like when you see how it's made, usually the fruit tastes better. Look at the Justin's eyes. So good. Enjoy, enjoy. Thank you. This one is strong. Really? That's also strong. So spicy too. Wow. Yesterday at the hotel we had cha-cha but that was like really strong. This one is strong. Okay, it's a trick. You cannot put it down unless you finish it. Only like from one shot or it can be slowly drink? Yes. Only one shot. Oh my god. The thing about Ashan is that you cannot put it down until you finish it. Just because of the way they design. If you put it down, it means it will spill of course. So you have to finish it in one go. It's a little bit. It's not a lot to be honest. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, looks fine. Oh, it's okay. Like this? So tasty. Good job. So good. Wow, so interesting experience. It's like a harmless grape juice but really it's not. Thank you so much. Open this bottle tonight and drink. Cheers to Georgia. Okay, we'll do. Yeah, cheers to you guys too. Thank you so much. See you next time. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. See you next time. Bye-bye, thank you. Okay, thank you very much. See you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. To me, they are the nicest Georgian people I've ever met and it really truly shows what Georgian hospitality is like. It's beautiful, good food, good wine, and just the fact that they're so heartwarming, I love it. Yeah, and now we need to be super careful because we drink a little bit and now Justin is driving back to our hotel. So we'll see you guys in the next episode. Bye-bye.