Georgia has fourteen cheeses registered as its own, but a visitor only needs to recognise five of them. Learn Georgian cheese at the level of imeruli, sulguni, guda, dambalkhacho and tenili and you can order confidently, shop at any market, and know why your khachapuri pulls into strings the way it does.
Two of those five you will eat almost daily. The other three are the ones worth going out of your way for.
Imeruli and sulguni: the two you actually eat
Start here, because these are the cheeses on your plate whether you asked for them or not. Imeruli comes from the Imereti region in western Georgia. It is a fresh, lightly brined white cheese, crumbly but meltable, sitting somewhere between a young feta and a soft mozzarella. Clean, milky, a little salty. This is the everyday table cheese.
Sulguni is the stretchy one. It is from Samegrelo, made by working and stretching the curd until it turns elastic, so it tears into ropes rather than crumbling. Fresh sulguni is mild and rubbery in a good way, like a saltier mozzarella; aged sulguni gets sharper and firmer.
Here is the thing nobody tells you about khachapuri. That famous cheese bread is not one cheese, it is a blend. Most Georgian cooks fill an imeruli khachapuri with a two-to-one mix, two parts imeruli to one part sulguni, per Georgian recipe convention (georgia-spirit.com). The imeruli brings the salt and the melt; the sulguni brings the stretch, the long gooey pull when you cut in. Order it made with only one of them and it is missing half the point.
Smoked sulguni
Smoked sulguni is the same cheese hung over smouldering wood until the outside turns a deep mahogany-amber. The smoke does not overwhelm it — you still get the milky pull underneath — but it adds a savoury edge that survives a suitcase far better than the fresh version. If you are choosing one cheese to carry out of the country, this is the one I would reach for.
Guda: the mountain sheep cheese
Now the interesting ones. Guda is sheep’s-milk cheese from the high pastures — Tusheti above all, also Khevsureti and the Svan mountains. What makes it guda is the ageing: fresh curd is salted and packed inside a prepared sheepskin bag (the bag is the guda), tied shut, and left to ripen at mountain temperature.
The result is dense, pale yellow, and properly savoury — sheepy, salty, buttery all at once. Young guda at a couple of months is approachable. Give it six months and it turns pungent and sharp, the kind of cheese shepherds eat with bread and nothing else. It is the flavour of Georgian high country in a way no lowland cheese manages.
Dambalkhacho: the funky one
This is the cheese Georgians warn foreigners about, then watch your face. Dambalkhacho comes from Pshavi and Tianeti, up in Mtskheta-Mtianeti. Dried cottage-style curd is shaped into small cones, packed into clay pots, and left for months to grow its own blue-grey mould. It carries protected geographical-indication status, registered in Georgia back in 2012 and recognised abroad (gov.uk protected names register).
The smell is powerful, ammoniac, close to a hard blue. The flavour is piquant and spiky. It is most often melted into butter and eaten hot with bread or mchadi, which tames it a good deal.
Our advice: if you like Roquefort, seek it out. If blue cheese already loses you, one taste is enough to say you did it, and no one will judge you for stopping there.
Tenili: the thread cheese
Tenili is the showpiece, and the rarest of the five. It comes from Meskheti in southern Georgia, around Akhaltsikhe. Fresh sheep’s-milk cheese is heated and stretched in hot whey, then pulled into threads so fine the finished cheese looks like a coil of raw wool packed into a clay pot. The braiding stage alone takes around 25 minutes of constant dipping and stretching, which is why it is often called the most technically demanding cheese Georgia makes.
It tastes milder than you would guess from the effort — gentle, milky, less salty than sulguni. You are paying for the craft, not for the punch. You won’t find it at every market stall; tenili is a special-occasion cheese and it is priced like one.
Where to buy cheese in Tbilisi
Skip the supermarket dairy aisle for anything beyond imeruli and fresh sulguni. The real range is at the markets, and the one to head for is Deserters’ Bazaar (Dezerter) beside the central train station. The cheese and matsoni sellers work the covered indoor hall in the middle of the market — a quieter corridor where the vendors wait for you rather than shout, and where you can taste before you commit.
One habit worth keeping: buy from the indoor stalls, not the sellers crowding the entrance, who tend to quote inflated prices to anyone who looks like a tourist. Point, ask to taste, agree the price per kilo before it goes on the scale.
Rough market prices, checked September 2026 against a Dezerter shopping guide (kimiabroad.com): imeruli runs about 10–15₾ a kilo, plain sulguni about 12–18₾, with smoked sulguni at the top of that band. At roughly 2.6₾ to the dollar, that is a few dollars for enough cheese to feed a table. Guda, dambalkhacho and tenili cost more and vary far more by ageing and vendor, so ask on the day rather than trusting any printed figure, this one included. Prices have been drifting up with inflation, so treat these as a starting point, not a promise.
If you would rather browse cheese as part of a wider wander, the stalls near Dry Bridge market sit within walking distance of several food vendors, though Dezerter remains the serious dairy destination.
Getting cheese home on a flight, honestly
The awkward truth first: if you are flying into the European Union, you are not allowed to bring dairy at all. The EU bans meat and milk products carried in personal luggage from non-EU countries like Georgia, cheese included, with narrow exceptions for things like infant formula (europa.eu customs rules, checked September 2026). Enforcement varies, but the rule is a flat no, and getting caught means the cheese goes in the bin at best.
Flying somewhere with looser rules, the UK, the US, the Gulf? Then the only real question is cabin versus hold. Firm cheeses — aged sulguni, smoked sulguni, guda — count as solids and pass hand-luggage screening fine. Soft, spreadable, or wet cheeses can be treated as liquids or gels and fall under the 100ml carry-on limit, so pack anything squishy in your checked bag. Whatever you buy, ask the seller to vacuum-seal it. Most Dezerter vendors will, it survives a day of travel far better, and it spares your clothes the smell of a cheese that has been sitting warm since morning.
For where these cheeses turn up on a menu, see our wider Georgian food guide.
Frequently asked questions
What cheese is used in Georgian khachapuri?
The classic filling blends two cheeses in a two-to-one ratio, imeruli for salt and melt, sulguni for the stretch. The adjaruli (boat-shaped) version usually leans harder on sulguni to get that glossy pull around the egg yolk. A pie made with only one of the two is either bland or won’t string properly.
Which Georgian cheese is the smelliest?
Dambalkhacho, comfortably. Its months in a clay pot give it a sharp, ammoniac, blue-cheese aroma that clears a room. Aged guda is a distant second — assertive and sheepy, but nowhere near as confronting. If you want a Georgian cheese with no funk at all, stick to fresh imeruli.
Can I take Georgian cheese back to Europe?
No. Personal imports of dairy from Georgia into the EU are prohibited, so it may be confiscated at the border regardless of how it is packed. Travellers to the UK, US or Gulf states face no such blanket ban, though hard cheese travels much better than soft.
Where is the best place to buy cheese in Tbilisi?
Deserters’ Bazaar by the train station has the widest, freshest selection and lets you taste first. Head for the covered dairy hall in the middle rather than the entrance stalls. Supermarkets carry decent everyday imeruli and sulguni if you just need cheese for a picnic.
One last thing before you buy in bulk: taste the same cheese from two or three vendors before deciding. Guda and sulguni especially swing hard from stall to stall depending on who made them and how long they aged, and the cheapest is rarely the best. Five minutes of tasting saves you a kilo of something forgettable.
Featured image: Georgian Recipes at Georgia About (CC BY 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.
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