Marani Hotel

A Hotel Built on Top of a Working Winery

Marani takes its name from the Georgian word for a wine cellar, and the hotel earns it: the building sits above an underground wine-tasting cellar that belongs to the Davitadze family's own winery, with the hotel built around that cellar rather than the other way round. It is an unusual premise for a city-centre address in Batumi, where most hotels compete on sea views rather than what is stored in the basement, and that difference in priorities is worth noting before a guest ever checks in.

Why It Works

A nightly tasting at a fixed hour, in a cellar beneath the building guests are already sleeping in, turns a theoretical interest in Georgian wine into something guests actually do rather than read about on a laminated card. The wines themselves draw on grape varieties from both eastern and western Georgia, not simply the local Adjara region, and the attached wine shop stays open through the day for anyone who wants to take a bottle further than the hotel restaurant. Between the restaurant, the cellar, and the shop, a guest can structure an entire evening around the property without once needing a taxi, which matters on a trip where the point is to slow down rather than rush between bookings.

Why This Location

The hotel sits in central Batumi, a fifteen to twenty minute walk from the sea, close enough to the city's main sights to make a car unnecessary for a day of sightseeing. The same central position makes it a workable base for day trips into the mountainous Adjara highlands, which the hotel itself helps arrange, so the wine cellar below ground is only one half of the pitch: the other is a location that does not force a choice between the coast and the hills, a combination that is harder to find in Batumi's hotel map than it sounds.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: city hotel built around a family-run underground winery and tasting cellar

• Rooms: 30

• Best For: travellers who want a wine-focused stay without leaving central Batumi

• Our Favorite Thing: the nightly tasting held in the underground cellar beneath the hotel

• Dining: an on-site restaurant, plus the attached wine shop and tasting cellar

• Amenities: terrace, meeting and banquet facilities, valet parking

• Attractions: central Batumi's sights, with day trips into the Adjara highlands organised from the hotel

A Cellar That Predates the Hotel Rooms

The winery is the Davitadze family's core business, and the hotel reads as something built up around it rather than a hotel that added a cellar as an afterthought. That ordering shows in the details: a fixed nightly tasting time, a wine shop kept open longer than most hotel bars, and a wine list drawing on grape varieties from across the country rather than a narrow regional selection. For a guest who cares about Georgian wine beyond a glass at dinner, that is a meaningfully different starting point than a hotel that simply stocks a local label.

A Practical Base in Central Batumi

Above the cellar, the hotel itself does not try to be more than it is: thirty rooms, a restaurant, a terrace, and enough meeting space to host a small group, with valet parking to handle the practical side of a central address. There is no spa, no pool, no attempt at resort scale, and that restraint is arguably the point. A guest who wants Batumi's beach resorts has plenty of other options; a guest who wants an easy, central, walkable base built around something more specific than a sea view has fewer, and Marani is one of them, cellar included.