Boutique Georgia in 9 days: four buildings worth the rate
Georgia is not a country with a deep bench of great hotels. It has perhaps twenty properties we would put a client in at the top of the market, and they are concentrated in Tbilisi and Kakheti with two or three exceptions in the mountains. Anyone selling you a fourteen-day luxury circuit here is pad
- Duration
- 9 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- May, Jun, Sep, Oct
- From
- $2,700 per person
So this route is built the other way round from our usual method. We chose four buildings, and then we built the days around them: a nineteenth-century courtyard house in Tbilisi, a working wine estate in Kakheti, a lodge above the Truso valley in the high Caucasus, and a restored manor in Imereti. Nine days, three moves, and no night in a hotel that exists only because the route needed one.
Who it suits: travellers who care where they sleep, who would rather have three nights in one exceptional room than six in two adequate ones, and who do not need to see everything.
Your specialist: a named Georgia specialist here, with our Tbilisi partner team running the ground.
Day by day
Days 1 to 3: Tbilisi, a courtyard house in Sololaki. The building is the point: carved wooden balconies around an internal courtyard, a painted stairwell, a dozen rooms, and a district where you walk out to everything.
Day two: a private morning with an architectural historian rather than a general guide, through the old town, the sulphur quarter and the art nouveau stairwells that most visitors never enter. Afternoon in a private room at the Abanotubani baths.
Day three: empty by design. Options in your document: contemporary galleries and the design shops on Kote Abkhazi, the Georgian National Museum, the Chronicle of Georgia monument above the reservoir, or a car and a driver and nothing planned.
Days 4 to 6: Kakheti, a wine estate. Two hours east. Vines to the horizon, a pool, and a cellar under the house.
Day four: arrival, an afternoon of nothing, and a dinner built around the estate’s own qvevri wines with the winemaker at the table.
Day five: Sighnaghi and the wall walk in the morning, the Bodbe convent, and a long lunch at a family marani in a village where the kitchen is somebody’s kitchen. Afternoon back at the estate.
Day six: three cellars with a driver, or the Tsinandali estate and its gardens, or the pool. We would take the pool on at least one of these afternoons and we will say so.
Days 7 and 8: The high Caucasus, a mountain lodge. North and up, about four and a half hours from Kakheti, over the Jvari Pass at 7,815 feet (2,382 m) to a lodge on the ridge with a wall of glass facing Mount Kazbek at 16,512 feet (5,033 m).
Day eight: up to the Gergeti Trinity Church early, before the vehicles, on foot in ninety minutes or by 4×4 if you would rather. Afternoon into the Truso valley, which has travertine terraces, mineral springs and abandoned towers, and which almost nobody visits.
Day 9: Back to Tbilisi and out. Three hours down the Military Highway, with Ananuri fortress on the reservoir on the way, and a last lunch in Tbilisi if the flight allows.
If your dates fall between June and September and you have an extra two nights, we replace day nine with a manor house in Imereti and the Gelati monastery, which is the fourth building and the best medieval interior in the country next door to it.
What is included
Nine nights in four inspected properties with breakfast, a private car with an English-speaking driver throughout, an architectural historian in Tbilisi, licensed guides on three further days, a private room at the sulphur baths, a cellar dinner with the winemaker, a marani lunch, three family cellar visits, the 4×4 to Gergeti if you want it, all entries, restaurant reservations throughout, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Tbilisi partner team.
What we would change, and when
- Want to stay put? Cut the mountain section, add two nights in Kakheti and two in Tbilisi. That is a genuinely good seven days for someone who does not want to be in a car.
- Travelling in winter? The mountain lodge is better in snow and the pass is less reliable. We build a contingency night at Gudauri into any December to March version.
- Want the sea? There is no boutique hotel on the Georgian Black Sea coast that we would send you to. That is an honest gap. The Adjara hills inland have two small properties worth a night, and we would not build a beach section here at all.
- Want more? Add three summer days in Svaneti. The accommodation there is a good guesthouse and nothing more, and we would tell you that before you go rather than after.
Honest notes
There is a ceiling in Georgia, and this route sits at it. The best rooms in the country are excellent value by international standards and they are not the equal of the top tier in Western Europe. Service is warm rather than polished. Kitchens are ambitious and inconsistent. We think the trade is a good one and we would rather you knew the shape of it.
The mountain lodge is the weakest link on paper and the strongest in practice. The building is a piece of design that some people find cold, and the view from the room does the work. On a cloudy week you are paying for the room and not the view, which is why we schedule two nights there rather than one.
Kakheti in August and Tbilisi in August are hot, mid nineties Fahrenheit (about 35°C), and the pool becomes the plan rather than a bonus. May, June, September and October are better.
Nothing on this route is at an altitude that causes problems. The highest night is Kazbegi at about 5,700 feet (1,740 m).
Built by your named Georgia specialist, checked against notes our founder made in the field.
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