Borjomi UnderWood

A House That Borjomi Points At

Borjomi sits in a narrow wooded valley in Samtskhe-Javakheti, and almost everything the town is known for happens along one street and in the park at the end of it. Underwood stands on that street, close enough to the entrance of the historic mineral water park that the walk takes about three minutes. The building is the first thing anyone mentions: a piece of architecture that locals send visitors to look at, timber-heavy, angled to catch both the street and the forest rising behind it. Inside, fourteen rooms hold somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-five guests, which is the scale of a house rather than a hotel, and it behaves like one.

Why It Works

Three reasons. The first is that the architecture is not decoration; it gives every room a different outlook, some to the street theatre of Borjomi, some into the trees. The second is the cellar in the front courtyard, where eleven Georgian natural wines are poured from qvevri, the buried clay jars behind this country’s oldest style of winemaking. The third is the position. In a town where the distance between your door and the spring decides how the day goes, three minutes on foot is the whole argument. Add a coffee shop at the front and family rooms upstairs, and the place covers a lot of ground for its size.

Why This Location

Borjomi Central Park was laid out in 1850 around the Ekaterina Spring, the source the town was built on, and you drink the water warm from the pavilion rather than cold from a bottle. The park’s cable car lifts from the valley floor to the plateau above. Follow the river about three kilometres upstream and you reach the open-air sulphur pools, fed by springs that hold a steady temperature close to twenty-seven degrees and worth the walk with a towel. Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park begins some fourteen kilometres away. The hotel sits in the middle of all of it, on the side of the street that is still busy at dusk.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: Timber, wine, small-town Borjomi

• Rooms: 14, individually designed, sleeping 28 to 35 guests, family rooms available

• Best For: Wine travellers, walkers heading for the national park, families

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The courtyard cellar and its eleven qvevri wines

• Dining: Restaurant with continental breakfast, bar, coffee shop at the front, room service, packed lunches for hikers

• Amenities: Sun terrace, shared lounge, tour desk, car hire, private check-in and check-out, babysitting, allergy-free and soundproof rooms, minimarket, private parking, pets accepted

• Attractions: Borjomi Central Park and the Ekaterina Spring about three minutes on foot, the park cable car, the sulphur pools roughly three kilometres upstream, Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park around fourteen kilometres away

Eleven Wines in the Front Courtyard

The cellar is small and sits where you cannot miss it, in the courtyard between the street and the front door. Eleven Georgian natural wines are poured from qvevri, and the list is the point rather than the setting: amber wines made the way they were made here long before anyone thought to call them orange. It is the kind of tasting you do standing up, on the way in or on the way out, and it does more for an evening in Borjomi than a formal wine list would.

Fourteen Rooms, No Two Alike

Each room was designed on its own terms, so the choice is about outlook rather than category. Street-facing rooms give you the town, which in season stays lively into the evening; the rooms turned the other way look into the forest. Family rooms make the hotel workable with children, and soundproofing and an allergy-free room are there for anyone who needs them. Air conditioning and heating cover both ends of the Borjomi year, which runs from hot valley summers to snow on the road to Bakuriani.

Using Borjomi Without a Car

The tour desk arranges themed trips around the valley and the hotel can organise an airport transfer or a hire car, but the honest answer is that you will not need one for the first two days. The park, the spring, the cable car and the main street are all walkable from the door. Check-in runs from mid-afternoon to late evening and check-out through the morning, with private check-in available if you arrive off the long drive from Tbilisi.