Esquisse Design Hotel

A Concept Hotel Named After a Tbilisi Literary Salon

Esquisse takes its name, and its logo, from a nineteenth-century building in Tbilisi that once hosted literary gatherings, and the hotel's founder built the whole project around that idea: a stay organised around science, culture, and creativity rather than a fixed design template. The result opened in Kurdghelauri, on the edge of Telavi, as a property where the concept matters as much as the location, and it has since become the first in a small Georgian group that is expanding the same idea to Tbilisi and Gudauri. Unlike a hotel assembled from a standard catalogue of finishes, Esquisse reads as a project with a point of view, even before a guest has stepped past the entrance.

Why It Works

Instead of repeating a single room design across the property, each room at Esquisse is decorated around its own theme, which gives the hotel a different character from one corridor to the next rather than a single look multiplied thirty-two times. The grounds carry the same spirit: alongside the hotel building, the property preserves a traditional Kakhetian house, and adds a restaurant, a bar, an outdoor pool, a garden and terrace, and a billiards room, which together make it function closer to a small resort than a simple overnight stop. Families travelling with children have a playground and evening entertainment to fall back on, while the billiards room and garden give adults somewhere to spend an evening that is not the hotel bar.

Why This Location

Telavi sits at the centre of Kakheti, Georgia's principal wine region, and a plot on its edge gives Esquisse the space a town-centre address could not: room for a pool, gardens, and a historic house kept standing alongside the newer building. It is close enough to Telavi itself for a short drive into town, and close enough to the vineyards that define the region for Kakheti's wine routes to be the obvious reason most guests are there in the first place.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: concept-driven design hotel built around science, culture and creativity

• Rooms: 32, each individually themed

• Best For: travellers exploring Kakheti's wine region who want a concept stay with resort-style grounds

• Our Favorite Thing: the traditional Kakhetian house preserved on the property

• Dining: restaurant, bar, and BBQ facilities

• Amenities: outdoor pool, garden and terrace, billiards, meeting and banquet facilities

• Attractions: Telavi and the vineyards of the Kakheti wine region

A Concept That's Expanding Beyond Telavi

What separates Esquisse from a one-off boutique project is that it did not stay a single hotel. The same team has since taken the brand to Tbilisi and announced plans for Gudauri, which suggests the concept, individually themed rooms built around a cultural idea rather than a fixed look, found an audience beyond Kakheti's wine tourists. For a stay in Telavi, that also means the hotel is run by an operator with more than one property's worth of experience behind it, rather than a single family venture figuring things out as it goes.

The Kakhetian House on the Grounds

The most telling detail on the property may be the one that predates the hotel itself: a traditional Kakhetian house, kept standing on the grounds rather than cleared to make room for more rooms or gardens. It sits alongside a design-forward hotel built around a very different, very modern idea, and the contrast between the two says something about the property's approach more broadly, new concept, old region, built side by side rather than one erasing the other, and it is the kind of detail that rewards a guest who takes the time to walk the grounds rather than staying by the pool for the whole visit.