Why a Georgian dinner lasts four hours and what you should never turn down.
A Georgian supra is not a long meal because the food keeps coming. It is long because the toasts keep coming, and each one is a small speech with an order to it — for peace, for the hosts, for the departed, for the journey ahead. The tamada, the toastmaster, runs the table, and the rhythm is the point.
For a visitor this creates two practical questions: how much wine to accept, and how to decline without giving offence. On the first, pace yourself against the toasts rather than the pours; nobody expects an empty glass at every round, and a full glass is a perfectly good answer. On the second, the graceful exit is a toast of your own. Say something, drink a little, and the table moves on.
What you should not turn down is the bread and the walnut. Georgian cooking leans on both — badrijani, pkhali, the cheese breads — and they are also the dishes that make a supra work for guests who do not drink. The same applies to the churchkhela and the honey, which travel well and make better gifts than anything in the airport.
Tbilisi is where most journeys begin, and it is worth two nights before the mountains. The old town, the sulphur baths and the funicular up to Mtatsminda are all within a short walk of each other, and the city rewards an unhurried morning. Kazbegi comes after, along the Georgian Military Highway, with the Gergeti church above the valley and a night in Stepantsminda rather than a day trip.
The wine country sits east, in Kakheti, where the qvevri method is still in daily use and the dinners are even longer. We usually place it at the end of a Georgian route, when the table has become the reason for the trip.