Irma guest house in Sighnaghi

We stay at a small guest house in the outskirts of Sighnaghi. It is located down at the end of a little ally leading to the main road to the center. It is a bit difficult for us to find the alley – we have tried to add it to the GPS but we don’t really get to the destination. We are pretty close on the main street but can’t find the house. Fortunately a car drives by and stop – the driver doesn’t speak any English but we manage to explain him where we are staying and he can talk to the owner of the guest house who doesn’t speak English. The car drives away and we don’t know what to do – should we wait or search for the guest house. After a bit of a wait a car come with Irma and her husband and we can follow them to the guest house.

The house is big with a little yard in front which obviously got wine growing all over the garden – we are after all at the heart of the wine growing region of Georgia so everybody grow their own wine.

We walk into the house we get to a huge hall with the stairway and high ceiling. Next to the hall is a dining area where the breakfast is served. The house looks almost like a little castle than an ordinary house. Though the house is only build in 1985 so it hasn’t got a long history – and if you look carefully you can spot some places where the building standard isn’t top end.

The stair leads to the first floor where there is a large sitting area in front of a few rooms. Some of the rooms lead to this sitting area but our room is facing the garden and got a nice view of the landscape and the city. The room is large and we have plenty of space to spread out and we got direct access to the large balcony of the house. A special feature of the room is they give a little taste of the local red wine at night so you can enjoy the local produce as part of the cost of the room.

The owners don’t speak any English so communication is somewhat difficult if you don’t speak Georgian or Russian. Fortunately Irma is happy users of google translate on her phone so we do manage to have some sort of conversation with her. This is how we know her husband parents build the house in 1985 and the husband has lived in the house since then. Unfortunately the economy of the Georgia isn’t the best and only Irma has a job as a school teacher for the moment. So the rent they can make from the rooms in the house is probably a significant extra income for them – even though the price of the rooms are only around 20€ a night. Plus you have to pay extra for the breakfast – which is somewhat overpriced at 5€ each and you are better of having breakfast at a hotel in town.

At the last night we heard about their own production of wine. They make wine and the local spirit chacha. They make both white and red wine in a shed in the back of the house. The white wine is made on grapes they buy from a local producer of grapes while the red wine is made using the grapes they grown in their own garden. They will actually harvest the grapes on the day we are leaving so we don’t get to see the harvest or the production of the wine. The wine is produced in large plastic barrels in the shed and they also have a large barrel of the residual grape skin used for the production of chacha.