Chateau white flags

An 1887 Estate Above the Alazani, Still Making Wine

The road out of Telavi climbs past vine rows and walnut trees before it reaches the gate. What waits at the top is a family estate that has stood since 1887, restored rather than rebuilt, with its stone vaulting and its buried clay vessels left where generations of winemakers put them. Kisiskhevi is a working village in the Telavi municipality, and Chateau White Flags behaves like a house in it: the pool sits in the garden rather than staged for a brochure, the sauna waits at the end of a path, and the valley does the rest. From the terrace the Alazani opens out flat and green, and the Greater Caucasus closes the far horizon.

Why It Works

Kakheti has no shortage of guesthouses and no shortage of large wine hotels. This one sits in the narrow space between them: small enough that the winemaker pours your tasting himself, serious enough that the cellar under the guest wing is a genuine marani with qvevri still in use. The estate makes wine, and the rooms were fitted into the buildings that wine already occupied, which is why a suite here can have vaulted stone and a fireplace instead of a hotel corridor. For a traveller who wants Georgian wine country explained by someone who works it, that arrangement is the whole point.

Why This Location

Kisiskhevi lies a short drive from Telavi, the capital of Kakheti, which puts the region's set pieces within an easy morning. Tsinandali and its estate gardens are the closest of them; the ruined royal citadel at Gremi and the monasteries in the hills above the valley sit further along the same roads. Tbilisi is roughly two hours west, so the estate works as a first stop out of the capital rather than a day trip from it. The trade off is that this is countryside: there is no village restaurant strip to walk to after dinner, and a car, or a driver arranged by the house, makes the difference between seeing Kakheti and looking at it.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: Restored estate, unhurried, wine at the centre

• Rooms: Nine, including a suite in the old cellar wing and a glass walled suite facing the valley

• Best For: Wine travellers, couples on a Kakheti detour, small groups taking the estate together

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The Qvevri Suite, set in the cellar wing under stone vaulting, with a fireplace and its own tasting corner

• Dining: Estate table serving full Georgian supras, often laid outside under the walnut trees, with the house wine poured alongside

• Amenities: Outdoor pool, dry sauna with hot tub, underground marani for tastings, private parking, garden, family friendly

• Attractions: Tsinandali estate, Telavi old town, Gremi citadel, Alaverdi Cathedral, vineyard walks on the property

Rooms Built Into the Old Cellar Wing

The house divides its rooms by what part of the estate they occupy rather than by category. The Vine Room takes a corner of the upper floor, with a cast iron bed and a balcony that hangs over the vine rows. The Qvevri Suite is the one that gives the place away: it sits in the cellar wing, under stone vaulting, with a fireplace and a private corner for tasting. The Alazani Suite makes the opposite argument, glass on the valley side and a bathtub turned deliberately toward the Caucasus. With so few keys in total, the room types are genuinely different rather than graded versions of the same thing, and the choice is worth making deliberately.

Eight Pours in the Marani

Tastings happen underground, in the estate's own marani, where the qvevri are set into the floor and sealed as they have been in Kakheti for thousands of years. The format is simple and generous: a run of pours led by the winemaker, estate bottles, and the context that goes with them. In early autumn the vineyard walks become harvest walks and guests can follow the fruit from the row to the crush, which is also when the few rooms are hardest to secure. Excursions to Tsinandali, Gremi and the mountain monasteries are arranged privately through the house, the simplest way to handle a region where distances are short and roads are slow.