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We focus on all inclusive, premium authentic tours.

We are always transparent about pricing & inclusions/exclusions, so you get exactly what you think you are paying for, and normally more, not less. Eat, drink and enjoy without upsells and unexpected bills.

Our typical inclusions/exclusions (unless otherwise agreed):

INCLUSIONS:

• All food, beer, soft drink and wine (unless otherwise stated) – but normally extra too if wanted.
• Pork and/or veal unless requested not. 
• Driver-guide (with modern minivan or sedan), All transport for all days advertised on the itinerary. All their food and accommodation where required.
• Pickup and drop off – As listed above
• Entry fees to all locations
• Taxes
• Bottled water

EXCLUSIONS:

• Accommodation. We offer you options to book your own, or we can help you book and sometimes get you a discount. Your hotel breakfast is therefore typically excluded from our pricing as well.
• Airport Taxis / transfers, unless stated in your itinerary.
• Purchase of products to take home (Wine, food, souvenirs etc.)
• Additional food and wine beyond the inclusions (But really, there will be plenty already, and we do buy extra in almost all cases where requested).
• Insurance. Please arrange your own travel insurance.
• Tips – non-compulsory. Suggested minimum tip for Guides: 90 GEL (~30USD) per day per tour group. This is optional, or you can tip more or less.

Scheduled tours, have fixed, scheduled dates when they are already running.

On-demand tours will only run if someone requests to book them. At which point the date can be set. If you are happy to share the tour with others, we can advertise your dates. If enough people sign up then you may get a discount on the listed price. If not, you will pay the fixed price agreed when you booked the date.

We can never guarantee others will sign up to on demand tours, but it does certainly happen quite often, especially if you book further in advance.

In general it’s always better to book a scheduled tour if the available dates work for you, if you want to be on a tour to meet new people.

All our tours require a minimum of 2 guests to run, or an ~85% surcharge in order to run with only 1 guest.

Pricing per day varies depending on the number of people attending the tour, the types of experiences that will be included, and the level of those experiences (ie. casual fine dining lunch is significantly more expensive than khinkali at a budget family restaurant). Unlike budget tours, we don’t really ever take people for a “budget lunch” as we value quality and authenticity.

Our tours include experiences ranging from small family home meals, up to casual fine dining. None of these will ever be as cheap as grabbing a salad and khinkali at a low end roadside restaurant. As a specialist food & wine tour company we won’t compromise the quality of our tours to reduce the price, but we can provide quality at a varying price range, just never at the cheapest price.

The price you pay is the exact price it costs us to run the service (paying guides and vendors for what they provide etc.) plus a margin of 10% to 30% to cover marketing costs, office staff, and so we run at a profit (otherwise we’ll go out of business!). The margin depends on the amount of people, and type of tour. We actually subsidize tours with only 2 people on, out of our margin, to keep our pricing competitive, and because we’d rather have our guides out and getting paid, than get greedy and penalize small groups.

We always try to price transparently and as fairly as possible and to pay guides and vendors above average in order to retain the best people.

$1 USD = ~₾3 GEL

For Specialist Food & Wine Focused Tours (Lunch & Dinner)

If your tour focuses on good food & artisan wine (as most do) then that costs more. These sorts of tours typically cost 370 to 550 GEL per person per day, depending on group size and the exact places you will visit.

For Tours Excluding Dinner

If you book a custom tour that focuses more on things like hiking, sightseeing and historic attractions, these are normally cheaper as many of these activities are very cheap, or even free. For tours like this, prices typically range from 300 to 450 GEL per person per day depending on group size and the exact places you will visit. Even with these types of tours, we still get you to eat good food, and try at least a little wine (unless you don’t drink, of course)

Though we operate these types of tours on request, we mainly focus on food & wine because we excel at that.

Minimum Price of a Full-Day Tour With Transport

300 GEL per person per day (note that walking tours are sometimes less, and large private events can sometimes work out less than this too). 

This price is based around a more affordable (but still tasty and hearty) lunch, one small wine tasting of good (not best) quality wine, and no dinner. The rest of the activities for the day would be cheaper or free-type experiences, like getting out to waterfalls or visiting monasteries. This price also considers a minimum of 7 people on the trip, but normally more.

What budget tours do, that we don’t

What a lot of tourists misunderstand is that many tours advertised around Georgia are not even close to all-inclusive, and certainly not high quality. When you see wine trips for less than 100 GEL, what is included?

• You get a space on a bus, normally with a lot of other people (especially in high season).
• You have one guide, normally a junior guide as these companies pay the lowest wages, to serve all these people cheaply.
• They go where is cheapest and easiest, not where is best. This normally means large wine factories with low-quality wine, especially ones that offer free or very cheap tastings. Most stop at Patardzeuli which is a massive corporation right on the highway.
• They get kickbacks from these places, so they make money back from taking you to places you actually would not choose to go, which subsidizes the trip at the expense of quality. Good artisan winemakers don’t give their wine out to everyone for free!
• You pay for pretty much everything aside from the bus ticket, guide, and any venues that have offered a free or very cheap tasting. So, things like lunch (at the cheapest restaurant they can take you to), and any extra wine tasting (normally at somewhere cheap though), will be out of pocket, meaning the 100 GEL tour actually costs more like 150 GEL.

You get what you pay for!

What we do instead

• Small groups (up to 7 adults) for scheduled tours. Larger groups only for private bookings on request.
• Expert guides and sommeliers with great English.
• A focus on hand-picked, top quality, authentic experiences, not budget wine factories and restaurants.
• Genuinely all-inclusive, transparent pricing.
• Paying our guides and winemakers fairly and not squeezing prices down. We support local businesses, rather than try to exploit them!

The point of the above information is simple: If you value quality, small group interaction, authenticity, and want your food and wine selections made by experts who have gone to great lengths to engineer tours that will exceed your expectations, we can’t do that at the price you’ll see cheap tours advertised on the side of a minibus in the old town.

Our prices are very competitive given the amount we include.

If you are looking for a tour that costs less than 300 GEL per person per day, then we are not the right company for you. There is no point in contacting us.

The very edge of Kakheti, a wine-growing region called “Khashmi” is 45 minutes drive from Tbilisi old town. But the main Alazani valley, the mountain village of Signagi, and the historic town of Telavi (which are the 3 best general areas for wine & tourism) are about 2 hours drive from Tbilisi. With Telavi (North Alazani) also being over 1 hour from Signagi (South Alazani) too, but Telavi is accessible via the Gombori mountain pass. Hence why the north and south ends of the valley can be reached within 2 hours from Tbilisi, even though these towns are also 1 hour apart.

So, the biggest factor in any day trip to the main wine region is that, at a minimum, you will be driving for a total of 4 hours. To visit north & south Alazani it becomes a minimum of 5.5 hours driving. If you also go to East Alazani (Kvareli area) that’s another 30 minutes each way to cross the valley and back.

To provide a tour of less than 10 to 12 hours, you have to make some big sacrifices. The typical solution mass-tourism and budget tours use to solve this and tour in 8 hours? A focus on quick sightseeing stops. Lunch is at a tourist restaurant that can pump out food fast. And fast wine tastings at factories with production-line style service, normally at 1 or 2 locations, max. Pour, sip, and leave. Small servings of wine, typically, so guests don’t linger too long.

As our company focus is on quality of experience, grass-roots cultural connection, and taking time to taste wines with the winemakers in person, a typical tasting takes 1 hour minimum. To include an in-depth introduction to historic winemaking, 1 hour 20 mins. And adding in a family lunch with the winemaker, about 2 hours, but as these are very connective experiences that guests don’t want to leave, often longer. 

Comparing this to a 30 minute factory tour and tasting, and a fast food lunch, at places where you are motivated to be fast and then leave rather than indulge and experience, and the time difference then makes sense. For our company, running tours in this way would undermine the value of what we do.

If food & wine is an important focus of your travels, taking a full day or more to explore is very worth it. If you are mainly here for sightseeing and running on a budget, we might not be the company for you. A custom tour that is shorter may be possible from us, but only if you are clear and happy that you are willing to compromise on the experience and don’t hold us responsible for that. The best solution is for us to send you to a wine region closer to Tbilisi!