Uzuntawas the last hamlet. Then it was up through the snows of the Khikhata pass: still wet in early winter, but the fat, swirling flakes brightened the cinder-grey forest. That ridge divides Georgia’s Imereti region from its northern neighbour, Racha, whose often steeply sloping vineyards line the river Rioni.
I’d visited Kakheti, Kartli and Imereti before – Georgia’s dominant central wine-producing zones; but never the wild exterior. From the ice-crisped cemetery grass
