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We get a lot of questions about our tours! For the most comprehensive answers, all the details are below. This document is a work in progress and we continuously add new things as new questions come in. As such, SOME SECTIONS BELOW ARE INCOMPLETE. CONTACT US FOR MORE INFO IF NEEDED.
If you ever took a food and wine tour where you got to the end surprised you were still hungry, have no fear! With all our tours our goal is to make sure you leave the tour fully satiated. You never leave hungry or thirsty!
Hangovers are included in the price (you’re welcome!), but are certainly optional, and as natural winemakers typically use way less sulfites (or none at all), your hangover risk is reduced. But it’s certainly up to you, and we don’t pressure you to drink too much. If you want to slow things down, we can make a spittoon available.
Even with our half-day tours, you will certainly get plenty to eat, and normally more than enough wine for you to leave jolly.
All full-day tours include lunch AND dinner unless otherwise stated. Most wine locations provide more than just a tasting, refills are typical too, and wine is normally free-flowing during the main meal of the day. I’ve never had anyone tell us they did not get enough wine!!!
Read the above section and you can probably answer this question. Can you do more than 4? There are options, but for most guests, they are not recommended.
If you want to visit artisan winemakers, then they take a lot of pride in hosting you and in their wines and their marani’s (wine cellars). Though we politely ask them not to spend a lot of time repeating information you will already have learned at previous locations, their enthusiasm for their wines means that you’ll need more than 1 hour to taste 3 to 4 wines and have them share their passion and show you parts of their winery. 1.5 hours is a better amount of time, if not dining – and there will still be food, even if not dining.
We often hit the 1.5-hour mark and guests don’t want to leave, and we have to usher them out the door. This is why we include 2 to 4 wineries. If we had 5 or more we’d normally end up canceling the last couple. I am not kidding.
How do other tour companies visit more? Well, in Georgia, they don’t. Most mass-tourism tours do 1 to 3 in a day and those are normally factory visits where the tastings are hosted by staff, not the winemaker, and they have a set procedure to get you through fast. This experience is more similar to the international commercial style and is what guests may expect from a wine tour. But once you have done wine tasting Georgian style, you’ll realize what you have been missing. As one guest commented “I don’t know how I can enjoy normal wine tours again after this one”
So, if you want to do a lot of tastings, rather than longer but more engaging tastings, is it possible?
If you ONLY go to factory cellar doors or wine shops and don’t visit any artisan producers or home wineries, then 5 in a day is possible, or a little more, just.
Essentially, don’t visit any attractions at all, or only very quick photo stops (but no detours). Have lunch at a tourist restaurant with pre-booked food that is sitting on the table when you arrive, and then as the meal is not hosted, you don’t get delayed by conversations (which is sad).
Visit streamlined factory tastings where you will not have to spend time going in-depth. You can learn the basics while tasting, from a member of staff, and get through the tasting quickly, spitting out wine or leaving wine speeds this up too.
As our tours are about embracing wine culture, not just wine, I don’t offer tours like this, typically. The only time I would do this is for wine buyers/exporters who are here purely to assess wines for export. But I’d still suggest doing 1 day of the real experience as well, as that connects you to the wine more than just tasting it.
Sometimes you just have limited time and for professional reasons, you need to taste a lot of fo wines. When you are visiting for work, rather than leisure, you may be happier to be ushered around on a tight schedule and miss out on the experience of taking things at a Georgian pace, in order to meet your professional needs.
We can 100% build specialist trips to meet those professional aims. And we can communicate with artisan producers your goals and why you will not be able to accept their full hospitality – so they will not be offended. In this way, they can prepare for a rushed visit with exactly what is needed and have the spittoon at the ready!
We still have to factor in travel times etc. With a mix of factory and artisan stops, and no sightseeing, 7 to 8 in a day is almost possible, but it is very much for professionals (spitting out the wine), not for fun (though it’s still a bit fun!)
Let us know on our custom request form if you are a professional looking for a trip like this.
Our goal is to help you discover the most interesting wines that fit your requirements.
Currently no. We’ve had too many issues with the plans guests send us being logistically difficult or not great trips. This leads to a load of admin on our side to fix the trips, or just a lot of wasted communication time and the bookings not going ahead anyway.
During the main season, our guides are busy with our top-level tours most of the time anyway, so we can’t commit them to DIY trips anyway.
If you want to just hire a driver and try and negotiate your own itinerary, this is partially possible using a driver booking website like GoTrip. Drivers are rarely expert guides, or even partial guides, but you can find ones that speak ok English.
Foreign tourists massively underestimate the amount of wine at Georgian wine tastings. Forget any conception you have from touring other countries. Self-drive, unless you have an iron will and will spit out every wine, is completely impossible.
If the driver does stay sober, they will miss out on the whole experience and really not get to participate in thinks like Supra to the same level. This leads to disappointment and potentially negative reviews.
So, self-drive is irresponsible for us to recommend, and also a poor experience. Our tours can offer pickup at your accommodation, or a central meeting point. If you are not within the pickup area, we suggest getting a taxi to the meeting location, and we frequently book taxis for people staying in all different areas. Specific taxi information is normally listed on the tour booking page.
The answer really depends on the richness and type of experience you want. If you are more focused on seeing stuff rather than learning stuff, and happy to guide yourself, then a driver can be cheaper and sufficient.
For Eat This! Tours, we prefer to offer a richer experience, and having an expert guide really makes the difference when it comes to that.
If you want to travel budget and just get a cheap driver and DIY your tour this is partially possible using a driver booking website like GoTrip. We don’t offer any DIY driver trips.
On rare occasions, if we are fully sold out of guides in high season, we may offer our regular itineraries with a driver who speaks English, if you do not have flexible dates and you consent to this. On group tours of 9 or more persons, all tours include a driver AND a guide.
For walking tours or tours of 9 or more persons, an expert guide will lead you.
For tours of 1 to 8 persons (normally 7 is our standard small-group size) we have guides who also drive their own vehicle. Our driver guides obviously cannot drink wines along with you, but they do all have a good knowledge of Georgian winemaking, and advanced-level information is supplemented by the winemakers and wine hosts at each winery.
These specialist wine guides are in very short supply in Georgia. Very few sommeliers are also professional travel guides. Making it very hard to supply this option. If you are a wine professional visiting for the first time and need this option, contact us well in advance. Prices are typically from 400 GEL per day per group. As most wineries we visit have a wine host or winemaker available to answer advanced-level questions, this option is not needed for the average win tourist.
For those of you who found us through social media or our podcast etc. You may know that I (as the company owner) also lead wine tours here. As one of the few full-time expats in Georgia with advanced experience in Georgian wine, the combination of an expat perspective and a broad and diverse knowledge of Georgian wine can make for a very unique tour. Due to availability I mainly only lead our special one-off Wine Explorers tours as well as some of the Real Rtveli (harvest) tours. I rarely participate in our most popular daily tours. I do also host some wine-tasting sessions in Tbilisi.
My wife, Megsy, occasionally attends tours as the social host (which she did professionally on cruise ships for years) and provides a lot of knowledge on life and travel in Georgia, as well as drinking along with guests and upping the fun level! We don’t really offer this as a service, so if she joins you it will probably be a surprise!
Our typical scheduled (shared) tours have a maximum of 7 to 8 guests plus the driver-guide.
A fixed itinerary that runs on designated dates where you will join other guests who also booked. This may also include additional dates not on the fixed calendar, that were already booked in by other guests looking to share, but who could not participate on a date from the fixed schedule.
We spent years crafting the perfect, indulgent food & wine Kakheti tours. These are the BEST tours we offer. Take a look at the options and dates before considering a custom or on-demand booking.
A fixed itinerary from our existing tour list which you request to run on a date of your choosing. Others may be allowed to join, or not, you can let us know when you make your booking request below. If making the tour private, the price is sometimes higher than a shared tour, we will advise you based on your request.
The full list of existing itineraries that can be booked on-demand without additional customization fees (see custom tours info below) are listed on the on-demand booking form here. Most, not all, of these itineraries are listed in more detail on the individual booking page of each tour, and you can browse the tours list here.
Supra (Georgian feast) is better with a larger group, so we normally have 7 to 14 guests on these trips. Though we still make supra very fun with smaller group too!
Our Real Rtveli tours are incredibly limited dates each year, and often sell out, for this reason, we have groups of 12 to 15 typically.
Our special one-off Wine Explorers tours vary in size, from 5 to 15 people, depending on the type of tour and demand. These trips are limited, and more off-track. It’s not entirely uncommon for us to end up at places where they have never had English-speaking guests before.
Special events could have any number of guests. It depends on the event! We organize wine banquets at wineries, as well as harvest parties, and wine tasting evenings in Tbilisi.
If you book a private tour, we can accommodate any number.
Note that solo (1 person) private cost the same as a 2 person tour (as 2 is the minimum small wineries will host)
2 person private tours almost always incur a supplement fee. This can be as much as 15 to 20% higher than advertised prices. It depends on the type of tour.
Groups of 1 to 3 normally travel in Sedan or SUV. 4 to 8 in a minivan. 9 to 20 by minibus, and 20+ by larger bus.
Groups larger than 20 can be limited on the wineries they can visit. We also think groups larger than 20 lose the small group atmosphere, and so the experience will not be the same as the vas majority of tours we offer. That said, we can certainly offer events and options for very large groups, and still with a premium focus and with some independent artisan winery options.
Full information about requesting custom tours is here.
A custom tour is a tour that does not fit one of our existing itineraries or involves significant customization of one of our existing itineraries. If you want full custom planning, this comes with a significant extra cost. As a general rule, if your group is less than 6 people, we suggest always using one of our standard itineraries
Typically no. The Telavi tours go over Gombori mountain pass, which can close due to snow in winter. We have the option to drive around the mountain range, which adds about 1 hour of drive time for the whole day to the trip. Our Real Rtveli Family harvest tours are weather dependent as grapes cannot be harvested in wet weather. We replace the real tour with a simulation in almost all cases, if weather proves an issue.
Only with a taxi transfer. 2 main reason – Most tours start in Tbilisi (in general, not just our tours). And, there is very little demand for tours starting in Signagi, compared to starting in Tbilisi.
The tour market is not as well developed as somewhere like Napa Valley. It is far less common for guests to self-drive out to wine country and then take a day tour from there. All the best guides and vehicles are based in Tbilisi, and the vast majority of Kakheti tours depart from Tbilisi. Booking a local tour in Signagi/Telavi either means the guide comes from Tbilisi in the morning anyway, or you get a pretty low quality vehicle or guide (the ones who cannot get better paid work in Tbilisi).
We don’t operate lower quality, so it’s not something we can offer. Our guides come from Tbilisi, and the cost of fuel and their time is the same as if you had come from Tbilisi with them.
Because Kakheti (the state Signagi is in) is a big area, there are lots of wineries en route between Tbilisi and Signagi. Given it’s ~2 hours of driving to reach Signagi from Tbilisi, it makes more sense for our first winery stop to be on the way to break up the drive. If you need to start from Signagi, you can get a taxi (45 minutes) to meet us at the first winery on our Signagi tour.
Drop-off in Signagi is possible, depending on the final winery we visit at the end of the tour, otherwise, a taxi transfer is possible (30 to 60 minutes)
You could also book a private Signagi to Signagi day trip. Demand is low for these, but for private groups it’s possible.
Tbilisi or Kutaisi and our Telavi tours (and some wine harvest tours) from Telavi. Depending on which tour you are taking and to where. But our guides and drivers are coming from Tbilisi prior to those pickups, so there is no discount for pickups in wine country.
Custom pickup locations are definitely possible for all private tours (fees may apply), but for shared tours, as most guests depart from Tbilisi or Kutaisi, alternative pickup locations are only possible if they are close to the route where the vehicle will travel with the rest of the guests.
So, for Telavi tours, the group from Tbilisi passes through Telavi, so pickup is normally possible. But for Signagi tours, the group from Tbilisi stops at historic attractions and wineries prior to arriving in Signagi (there are some good ones en route) and you’d miss half the trip if not departing from Tbilisi. More info on Signagi above.
Why do your trips not commence and end in wine country?
We are well aware that in many wine destinations around the world the norm is to head out to wine country, stay in a nice hotel and then book a day trip or half-day trip around the local wineries. However, Georgia is not a mature market for wine tourism and demand for this type of tourism is simply not enough to justify the best quality guides living full-time in wine country.
All the best guides (who speak good English and know their stuff), vehicles, and drivers are based in Tbilisi and some in Kutaisi. This is where 90%+ of the work for them originates. Even if you are already in wine country, the driver/guide will still depart from Tbilisi or Kutaisi. For this reason, we cannot offer discounts to those who are already in wine country and want a local pickup as our costs for travel distance are exactly the same as if you departed from Tbilisi.
Our recommendation, if you want to spend extended time in wine country independently, to minimize your costs, is to depart on our tours from Tbilisi, and get dropped off at the end of the tour in wine country at your hotel there (if the location is not near the tour route we can also book a local taxi for you). This removes the need to pay for a transfer to get out to wine country. In some instances (our Telavi 1-day tour, for example) some guests get picked up in Telavi at the start, and return with the van to Tbilisi.
if you are the first to book a date, we’ll inform you if it’s likely others will book that date. If it’s not likely, we will not take a deposit until someone else books the date. We can also offer options to match you onto another tour that is running. If you pay a deposit and the tour is canceled due to not enough people, and we cannot match you to another tour (or you are not available) then we refund your deposit. Running the tour with only one person is very expensive, we have done it on occasion, but you’d need to cover the additional cost if it is your preference. The cost for one person is about the same as the combined cost for 2 people.
Typically we don’t book under 18’s onto shared wine tours. For 2 reasons:
That said, we sometimes allow 12+ onto shared tours if all other participants agree, and the accompanying parent understands the situation and consents to not hold us liable. We’ve never had any serious issues at any time in company history, but we also want to keep it that way by always favoring caution.
If your kids are under 12, or if you prefer not to have your kids mingle with guests who may be tipsy, then definitely request a private / on-demand tour.
Typical child prices on a private tour:
12 to 18 (no wine): ~60% discount on adult price. Parental choice if allowing tasting of your wine.
7 to 11: ~80% discount on adult price
0 to 7: If 2 or more adults, typically free. The exception is where we need a larger vehicle to accommodate multiple kids, then we have to charge to cover transport costs.
These prices may vary depending on the route and the number of adults.
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Booster Seats: We can sometimes provide these, but not always. We offer no insurance and take no liability for the quality of our booster seats. We recommend bringing your own. There is no law in Georgia currently (Jan 2024) that enforces the use of booster seats, though we suggest you do.
The main consideration for tour timings are:
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!
If you don’t care about the stunning Caucasus mountain scenery or the beautiful fortified village of Signagi, then head to the fringe of Kakheti, to areas like Khashmi, and we can send you to lovely family wineries for an authentic supra (feast) experience, or for a lighter lunch with a local family or at a high-quality independent restaurant with wine pairing menu.
Trips like this can range from 4 to 8 hours depending on the experiences you choose, and if you visit 1, 2 or 3 wineries. There are no historic sites of major interest in this area either, which is why the only tour we offer as standard to that area is the supra tour (a cultural event) – because most guests want at least some history and scenery to break up the wine and food. So it’s a bit of an unbalanced tour unless you genuinely have no interest in anything but wine and food. Request a custom tour for any options in this style, or book the supra tour.
4 hours in the vehicle, and the remaining time you have can be to make a quick exploration of Signagi and enjoy a winemaker-hosted lunch at one winery only. Possible in 7 hours. Add in a quick wine tasting at a non-family winery with a faster tasting experience, and less than 8 hours is just about possible. Because this is rushed and more than half the day is driving, we don’t promote this tour style. There are budget tour options out there that do these generic style tours where you spend most of the day driving.
Kakheti is the most famous wine region but this seems to mislead visitors into considering it the only viable option for wine tourism. We have fantastic wines of different styles being made in the Kartli region, and our wine discovery trip (~4 hours) will take you to UNESCO sites and includes a real family lunch with the winemaker. Or our 7-hour “little Kakheti” trip takes you to an area of Kartli very close to Tbilisi with a similar climate to Kakheti, where they grow some of the same grapes. A taste of Kakheti, also with UNESCO sites, winemaker lunch, additional wine tasting, and minimal driving (less than 2 hours total). These routes are less popular, so we offer them as private tours only, currently.
This trip is a lot of driving. It’s better to explore over the space of 2 days to get a more immersive experience with time to breath and enjoy lots of wines. We are expecting the new Kakheti highway to be completed sometime around 2025. That may reduce drive times enough to make a 1-day tour of both locations possible. We’ll see once it has opened!
You’ll get amazing Caucasus mountain views at both the Telavi and Signagi ends of the valley. The wines may differ, but on a 1-day trip you would have less time to explore in-depth anyway at both ends, so choosing Telavi or Signagi, depending on your interests, is sufficient if you are short on time.
95% of our guests want to primarily visit the Kakheti wine region, especially if it is their first trip to Georgia. We used to offer scheduled tours to many other regions and very few people booked them, so it was not practical to continue offering them.
From 2024 we offer scheduled tours from Kutaisi into the Imereti wine region. As Kutaisi and Tbilisi are over 3 hours apart, this is a great option for people in West Georgia and/or flying in or out of Kutaisi airport.
If you have not been to Kakheti, it’s Georgia’s most famous wine region but still has a LOT of raw authenticity and our tours take you a little off-track. You won’t be just following the mass tourism routes that budget tour companies provide. So, Kakheti really is a great destination when visiting with our tours.
If you have been to Kakheti before, there are some other options:
Sometimes, on request. If you are not willing to sign up for a tour without knowing which places you’ll visit, then email [email protected] but keep in mind the below info.
The main reasons we don’t publish a full list on each tour page:
Wineries with the most reviews are often the ones with the best marketing and budget. Some are great, some are average and/or generic. We pride ourselves on knowing the difference due to extensive visits, and professional wine qualifications.
We have a whole selection of alternative wineries that we love, and each alternative can fill one of the slots from each tour, based on them being in a location that fits and that the style of experience matches the tour description.
If you already took one of our Kakheti tours, you can use the “on-demand” booking form to select the route you want and mark the option for “alternative wineries” when you request to book. Under most circumstances we can still match you with other guests, and you won’t need a private tour, we’ll just switch up your route for you and other guests on that date.
To maintain the integrity and 5-star review quality of our tours, we refrain from sending you to places that do not meet our personal quality standards, even when you request them.
Though you can make suggestions, we typically won’t send you to them unless they meet our standards as well. We’d rather lose your business to a competitor than compromise on providing a 5-star experience.
If you want to plan the whole trip yourself and don’t have an interest in our feedback and opinions, it’s better to just book a GoTrip driver and build the itinerary yourself and book it all yourself. We don’t have the resources for a 20 email back and forth about custom routes unless you want to pay us by the hour to discuss it ;-)
Often, suggestions made in inquiries are not logistically possible either. Adding an extra 2 hours of driving to do a specific winery visit would ruin the whole structure of the tour and make for a less enjoyable experience. In these cases, we’d also advise against it. If your suggestions instantly make sense to us (we know right away from reading them!) then we can substitute. If we say some or all don’t make sense, then now you know why! And we can book something that does work, or you can plan your own trip without us. No problem!
We assess the places we choose based on experience since 2016, with 200+ different wineries visited in person, and many thousands of wines assessed. We judge the wine, the food, the hospitality, the scenery, the history, the authenticity, the consistency of these elements being good every time not just sometimes, and many other factors.
This broader context allows us a significantly more objective viewpoint than a blogger who was in Georgia for a week and made a list online of all the 10 places they visited. No offense to bloggers, but as I am also a blogger, I know that having a popular blog is enough to get your list on page 1 of Google, even if your list was based on a very brief trip to a new country where you are not experienced.
But, if as our tour guest, you have a personal connection, like wanting to visit a winery whose wines you tasted back home and loved, then we can certainly be more accommodating on that aspect as we know you will enjoy it, even if we don’t objectively love the wines and hosting at the place you requested. But we’ll advise you on this.
Our tours are definitely wine focused. We have a mix of groups who drink more or less wine, but if most of your group barely drinks wine and prefers maybe just a little wine tasting and the rest of the time touring/hiking/sightseeing etc. We are not the right company for you. We want everyone on our tours to know what they will be getting by touring with us, and to have those expectations exceeded.
If you are looking for more in the way of sightseeing and hiking etc. Submit a custom tour request and we can connect you to one of our tour partners who specializes more in what you want.
What to expect at a real traditional Georgian wine tasting:
Ie. A proper artisan tasting with the winemaker, not a factory cellar door.
Tourist conceptions of a wine tour seem to be going to a large wine cellar with many groups coming in behind them, with many wines being poured for many different groups.
But for our specialist tours, the wineries you visit are often places where they only have a few groups visit per day. You are often the only group arriving at the time you get there, and sometimes you are the only group they will have the whole day.
So, consider they may be opening 3 to 5 bottles of wine just for your group, and opening the winery and putting on food just for you. They are not a restaurant. So they have to be able to be in profit to make it worth opening and hosting you in person.
Most small wineries prefer groups of at least 4. And for 1 or 2 person groups they will always charge a supplement. We normall add about ~15 to 20% to standard pricing for 2 person private tours.
The most common question we get asked is, why are our tours more expensive than some others? There are a multitude of answers. If you never took our tours before, you’d have no idea how much value you get for the price. This is why those who do join us, overwhelmingly leave 5 star reviews, recommend us to others and return time and again to take new tours with us.
Our tours cost exactly the price of goods and services (restaurants, wine tastings, homemade food, cooking classes, tour guide, vehicles, fuel, etc.) + margin for the company (to cover admin staff, marketing and so we make a profit, otherwise the business would close). The margin is about 5% to 25% depending on the type of tour and number of guests. Basically, if you spent years in Georgia researching, making contacts, studying wine, and then planning your own trip, you could do the exact same trips as we provide for 5% to 25% less than we charge. But, for that margin, we saved you a lot of time 🙂and are providing places and guides that we have personally vetted already, to maintain quality control.
Whether our prices make sense to you really depends on your budget and what you value. We think cheap tours in Georgia can still be fun, but they don’t offer quality when it comes to wine, food or hospitality, and typically keep prices down by focusing on free sightseeing rather than premium wine and food, and sometimes having hidden costs during the trip. So, we don’t offer cheap tours.
We also strongly believe in paying our vendors fairly, so we don’t squeeze them to give the very lowest prices and we always choose places based on quality/experience first, not the lowest price. Additionally, we select the best guides, not the cheapest ones.
The final price of our scheduled, small-group tours depends on the total number of people in the van (max 7 to 8 with most scheduled shared tours, except Real Rtveli and some other one-off trips).
All the pricings for scheduled tours are listed on the tour pages in the pricing chart (below the tour description). The initial displayed pricing is the per-person price based on the maximum of 7 or 8 people sharing.
When you select a date and number of guests, the pricing will calculate your booking price based on how many people are already on the tour, and your imputed number of guests. The price shown is the maximum price you would pay. As the tour fills up, we can offer additional discounts. Even if you book solo, if enough other people join the group, you will pay less. We email you the final price a day or 2 before your trip commences.
We cannot guarantee the van will always fill up. So, if you consider the maximum price to be too much for your budget, we might not be the company for you. But as you’ll see, the minimum price is only marginally lower than the maximum price, this is because the cost per person for wine tasting and eating does not vary too much with groups this small, the main variations are that the cost of transport is shared out when more people book.
Please note that prices in Georgia significantly increased in 2022 & 2023 on many things – including produce and transport. This has directly affected our costs and had a knock-on effect on wages and many other things. Prices continue to rise with relatively high levels of inflation here.
Regarding pricing, as our focus is on all-inclusive, premium tours, I really can’t even start on a new booking for you if the budget is below 350 GEL per person per full-day tour (based on 5 or more people sharing). Below this budget, we’d have to sacrifice quality and choose budget food and transportation. Offering low quality in this way would undermine our reputation as a premium business.
If a minimum budget of 350 GEL per day is realistic, let me know and I can plan the trip to fit your budget. But note that true premium tours are 400+ GEL per day, so even with this budget drop, you’d have to remove certain things to get that price.
I highly recommend taking one of our scheduled tours though, as these have been built via years of experience and represent some of our best possible experiences – especially if you are new to Georgia and have not done our tours before.
For our tour guests (persons who are already booking a ½ day or longer all inclusive tour) we are sometimes able to also organise your required transfers This is more typical if your transfer is part of the full tour you are booking – for multi-day tours, for example.
For all other circumstances, I suggest booking on Gotrip for airport transfers and intercity connections. There is also a modern express train from Tbilisi to Kutaisi airport (then a taxi into Kutaisi) and Batumi.
The only currency accepted by vendors for buying wine/gifts etc. to take home, is the national currency GEL. You can get this from any ATM and your driver will be happy to stop at one.
Purchase of our tours is normally in GEL based on the current exchange rate for the USD pricing of the tours. We’ll advise you of the exchange rate by email shortly before the tour date.
All our 1-day and 2-day tours include, at a minimum:
Our 1/2-day tours normally also feature some or all of the above, with lunch OR dinner (not both) but please check the inclusions and itinerary on each individual tour page.
So, if you are looking for an indulgent, premium authentic food and wine adventure, every tour we offer will satisfy that desire. But we always suggest the full 1 or 2-day tours to really go in-depth and get the most immersive experience and variety.
Our 1-day Telavi (Vines & Mountains) tour focuses exclusively on small artisan producers (5k to 25k bottles per year) and the qvevri method, using natural techniques with minimal intervention and sulfites. This is the most grass roots experience we offer in a single day.
Our 1-Day Signagi (Vines & Villages) tour takes you on a journey from modern Georgian cuisine & and modern wine production at a medium-sized independent winery (less than 200k bottles per year) all the way through to natural qvevri family wine making, small-batch with 8000 year old traditions. As well as introducing the supra (Georgian feast) and the toasts of the tamada.
This is our most all-round tour that gives you a taste of everything in one day!
Our 2-day Kakheti (Wake Up In Wine Country Tour), combines all the most important elements of historic artisan traditions, as well as modern Georgian food and wine making, with more depth and the chance to stay overnight in wine country. For real wine enthusiasts, this tour offers a lot more wines to explore over 2 days.
Our tour routes in Imereti – departing from Kutaisi – give you the opportunity to explore the quite different wines of Georgia’s second-largest wine region (Imereti). Lighter, high acid wines made with less skin contact (still many made in qvevri though), create a whole different wine tasting dynamic, and Imeretian cuisine offers some clear regional culinary choices compared to East Georgia.
Still not sure? Browse our full list of available tours here.
Information on cancellation and refund policy is here: https://eatthistours.com/terms-conditions-of-service/
