Bitter is a feeling – making sense of Georgian wine

‘putin Xuilo’* it said on the high, rusty metal gate of the winery. On the other gate: ‘russia is a terrorist state’. We’d just walked carefully down a track so rough and runnelled with erosion that our driver (not one who’d shown much regard for life or limb up until that point) had elected to park the bus on the side of the road. From the safety of the driver’s seat, he lit a cigarette and watched us implacably. The gate opened and a bear of a man came...