Yes, there is Georgian wine worth crossing the country for that has nothing to do with Kakheti. The eastern region pours roughly two-thirds of the national output, so it hoovers up the attention, but four other Georgian wine regions make things you simply cannot get in a Kakhetian cellar: near-Tbilisi sparkling, feather-light Imeretian whites, a semi-sweet mountain red made from grapes that grow almost nowhere else, and a Black Sea coast planted with vines most Georgians have never tasted.
This is the map for when you have already done Kakheti, or you want to skip it. We cover it and the qvevri basics separately in our Georgian wine beginner’s guide and the Kakheti day-trip guide, so here we stay west and north.
The one thing that changes the moment you leave Kakheti
Skin contact. That is the axis the whole country turns on, and it shifts by region more than by grape.
Georgia’s signature is amber wine — white grapes fermented on their skins, seeds and stems inside a qvevri, the egg-shaped clay vessel buried to the neck in the cellar floor. Leave the juice on those skins for months and you get a drink the colour of weak tea, tannic like a red, nothing like a supermarket white. Georgians call it qarvisperi ghvino, amber wine, and the international press only borrowed the word “orange” for it around 2004. The method itself was old enough that UNESCO listed qvevri winemaking as intangible cultural heritage back in 2013.
Kakheti pushes that skin contact to the extreme — long macerations, big grippy ambers. What the western regions do is dial it down, or drop it entirely and work “European style” in steel and oak. So the practical rule for a traveller is simple: the further west you go, the lighter and fresher the wine in your glass, until on the coast you reach delicate rosés and sparkling. If tannic amber wasn’t your thing in Kakheti, that is not the end of Georgian wine for you. It is the start of a different half of it.
Kartli — sparkling, and the region you can actually reach on a spare afternoon
Kartli wraps around Tbilisi itself, spreading along the Mtkvari river and its tributaries, the Ksani and the Liakhvi, at 450 to 700 metres. That matters for one reason above all: the wind and the cooler nights here suit sparkling wine, and Kartli is where Georgia’s traditional-method fizz mostly comes from, per the country’s National Wine Agency’s own region breakdown.
The native workhorses are Chinuri and Goruli Mtsvane, both high-acid whites that keep their freshness — exactly what you want for bubbles. You will also find Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling planted here, because plenty of Kartli producers went the European route decades ago.
For a visitor short on days, Kartli is the sane choice. The vineyards start where Tbilisi’s suburbs end, so a half-day is genuinely enough, and you are back in the city for dinner. Nobody flies to Georgia specifically for Kartli. But if your itinerary is already full and you still want to stand in a working vineyard, this is the one that fits.
Imereti — lighter whites and a gentler amber
Imereti, centred on Kutaisi, is where Georgian white wine gets easy to drink. The stars are Tsolikouri and Tsitska, usually blended, and the difference from Kakheti is the winemaking, not just the grapes.
Imeretian cellars ferment on the skins for a fraction of the time Kakhetian ones do — a few days or weeks rather than months. The result is a paler, fresher, less tannic amber that a Chardonnay drinker can follow without a running start. Tsolikouri is the region’s chameleon: it turns up as dry white, semi-sweet, sparkling and skin-fermented amber, all from the same grape, as Wine-Searcher’s Imereti profile lays out. Tsitska, meanwhile, is widely rated the best Georgian variety for sparkling, so there is overlap with what Kartli does.
Getting there is cheap and boring in the good sense. A marshrutka from Tbilisi’s Didube station runs to Kutaisi for around ₾25, and from Kutaisi the wine villages are a short taxi ride. This is the region I would send a first-timer who found Kakhetian amber too much to handle.
Racha-Lechkhumi — the home of Khvanchkara
If you have heard of exactly one Georgian wine that isn’t Saperavi, it is probably Khvanchkara. This is a naturally semi-sweet red — the sweetness comes from cold mountain nights stalling the fermentation, not from added sugar — and it is made only from two grapes, Aleksandreuli and Mujuretuli, grown on the slopes above Ambrolauri.
Here is the fact that makes Racha worth the detour: those two grapes are barely grown at commercial scale anywhere else on earth. Khvanchkara has been a protected appellation since 1932, and authentic bottles are, in effect, a single valley in liquid form, as the appellation record confirms. Expect a dark ruby glass with a raspberry note and a soft, velvety weight — a red that sceptics of sweet wine tend to forgive.
The catch is distance. Racha sits about 250 km northwest of Tbilisi, deep in the mountains, and it is a long haul rather than a day trip — think an overnight, minimum, and a summer or early-autumn visit before the passes get miserable. You are going as much for the scenery and the semi-sweet reds as for tasting-room polish, because the polish here is thin.
One warning worth its own line: Khvanchkara is the single most counterfeited wine name in the country. Buy it in Racha, or from a named producer, not off a bus-stop table.
The Black Sea coast — Adjara and Guria’s oddball grapes
Down on the humid coast around Batumi, the vines change character completely. This is the frontier zone for wine geeks, and it barely overlaps with anything you drank in the east.
The grape to know is Chkhaveri, a pinkish-violet variety that ripens absurdly late — into the second half of November — and turns out pale, low-alcohol wines with real finesse. The same grape can be spun into a delicate rosé, a skin-fermented amber-rosé with grippy tannins, a still white, or sparkling, which tells you how much the winemaker’s hand matters here. Nearby, in Samegrelo, the ancient Ojaleshi vine gives a ruby semi-sweet red under the Salkhino appellation. A regional wine body describes the whole Black Sea coastal zone and its native varieties in more depth if you want the full list.
The practical draw is that you can pair coastal wine with an actual beach, and the trip out is easier than it used to be: the Tbilisi–Batumi train now runs in around four hours since the new tunnel opened in August 2026, down from five and a half. This is the region for the traveller who has already done the obvious Georgian wine and wants something almost no one back home will recognise.
So which region should you actually pick?
Straight answer, because the styles really do split by traveller:
- No spare days, based in Tbilisi: Kartli. Half a day, sparkling in the glass, home for dinner.
- You found Kakhetian amber too tannic: Imereti. Lighter whites, gentler skin contact, cheap to reach via Kutaisi.
- You want the famous semi-sweet red and mountain scenery: Racha-Lechkhumi. Commit to an overnight and go in warm months.
- You collect grapes nobody’s heard of and fancy a beach: Adjara–Guria. Chkhaveri, and a train ride to the coast.
Our advice: if you only add one western region to a Kakheti-plus-Tbilisi trip, make it Imereti. It is close, it is inexpensive, and its lighter style is the cleanest contrast to the east — you learn more about Georgian wine from that one comparison than from a third Kakhetian cellar. Racha is the better trip, but it costs you two days you may not have.
And if what you actually loved in Georgia was the raw grape spirit rather than the wine, that is a different road entirely — our guide to chacha picks up where the vineyard leaves off.
Frequently asked questions
Is Georgian wine only made in Kakheti?
No. Kakheti dominates the volume, but Kartli, Imereti, Racha-Lechkhumi and the Black Sea coast all have their own appellations and grapes. Kakheti is the biggest, not the only one — and the western regions make styles, like traditional-method sparkling and semi-sweet reds, that Kakheti largely doesn’t.
What is the sweet red Georgian wine everyone mentions?
Khvanchkara, from Racha in the northwest. It’s a naturally semi-sweet red from the Aleksandreuli and Mujuretuli grapes, and its sweetness is a quirk of the cold mountain climate stopping fermentation early. Because the name is heavily faked, buy it from a named producer or in the region itself.
Which Georgian wine region is easiest to visit from Tbilisi?
Kartli, which surrounds the capital and works as a half-day. After that, Imereti is the easy pick — a cheap marshrutka to Kutaisi from Didube station, around ₾25, then a short taxi to the cellars. Racha and the coast both need at least one overnight.
Are all Georgian wines amber or orange?
No, and this is the myth to shed. Amber wine is the country’s signature, but Georgia also makes dry reds, crisp European-style whites, traditional-method sparkling in Kartli, delicate coastal rosés from Chkhaveri, and semi-sweet reds in Racha. How much skin contact a wine gets is a regional and stylistic choice, not a national default.
If you can only fit one tasting into a packed trip, taste an Imeretian Tsolikouri and a Kakhetian amber side by side — the same country, the same colour on paper, and two completely different drinks. That single comparison teaches you more about Georgian wine than any map can.
Featured image: Photo: Levan Gokadze (uploaded by Giorgi Balakhadze) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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