Schuchmann Wine Bar & Restaurant “Schuchmann Wine Bar” location was carefully selected, and it was established in the old Tbileli Caravanserai in an inseparable part of the historical center of Tbilisi, which is located at 8 Sioni Street on the main artery of Tbilisi tourist route. Enjoy warm, friendly, exclusive atmosphere with handmade pure Georgian interior design at Schuchmann Wine Bar Taste Georgian Fusion carefully prepared by our professional cooks Drink our premium “Schuchmann” and “Vinoterra” wines directly from our Château and receive information on wines from our professional sommeliers Schuchmann Wine Bar & Restaurant is about presenting high standardized real Georgian wine and gastronomic experience… Our fantastic wines from our château, handmade pure Georgian interior design, open kitchen, Georgian Fusion, non smoking environment, Georgian ethno-jazz, high quality service and well trained and professional stuff are happy to welcome you at our place!

WARM, FRIENDLY, EXCLUSIVE ATMOSPHERE What Our Guests SaySchuchmann is one of Georgia’s most prominent wineries, specialising in wine made from the best indigenous Georgian varieties of grape, all cultivated in the unique micro climate of Kakheti. Its high class Tbilisi wine bar is hidden in the cellar of a 300-year old caravan-saray, underneath the Tbilisi History Museum. The interior is a combination of authentic red brick walls and furniture decked with Georgian motifs. Tables are glass covered kvevris (traditional wine pottery) and the chairs are made of 300-year old oak. There’s a choice between wines made using European technology and those made according to the traditional Georgian kvevri method. On Friday and Saturday evenings violinists perform live from their repertoire. Schuchmann Wine Bar Schuchmann Wine Bar Schuchmann Wine Bar Schuchmann Wine Bar Schuchmann Wine Bar Schuchmann Wine BarFive-litre bottles of beer, country musicians and questionable modern architecture – scratch the surface of Tbilisi and you’ll discover a Georgian city fiercely proud of its patchwork history, constantly trying to reinvent itself

The city that loves you. Arriving at Tbilisi International Airport in tourist season, surprised visitors are handed a bottle of local wine at passport control and are greeted with billboards welcoming them to Tbilisi: “The city that loves you.” Stroll down the city’s main thoroughfare Rustaveli Avenue on any given evening and you’ll come across groups of young musicians busking. Rock music is the order of the day, but you will occasionally hear groups of teenagers playing the phanduri (a traditional string instrument), and singing folk songs from Georgia’s Caucasus mountains. Tucked away behind the communist-era cinema on Rustaveli Avenue, the house of 19th-century lawyer and economist Vasil Gabashvili (built in 1897) in many ways typifies Tbilisi’s unique architectural style. An impressive double-storey wooden balcony, carved in traditional style, hangs elegantly from a classical façade replete with decorative baroque elements. The house was once the residence of notable Georgian physician Nikoloz Kipshidze, who acted as personal doctor to Josef Stalin during his protracted deathbed illnesses.

Although Communist authorities planned to destroy this grandiose bourgeois structure, Kipshidze managed to use his connection to Stalin to save the building, and it’s now home to his descendent, museum curator Nino Kipshidze and her artist husband Dato Sulakauri.best wine bars petaluma In the wake of Georgia’s bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003, many parts of Tbilisi underwent a radical facelift with modern glass-and-steel structures popping up across the city to reflect the progressive views of the country’s new western-oriented president, Mikheil Saakashvili. best wine bar miamiOne section of the Mtkvari River embankment in the city’s historical Old City was re-purposed as Rike Park, sweeping aside a number of popular but purportedly corrupt restaurant businesses.best wine bar clapham

The park’s two main architectural features are the Peace Bridge (sardonically referred to as the “Always Ultra Bridge” due to the unusual shape of its glass canopy) and a new concert hall and exhibition centre, which has been likened to a pair of dismembered legs. Construction stalled with a change of government in 2012, and the building remains unfinished, while many locals consider the building an unsightly intrusion on the architectural harmony of the Old City. A graduate of Tbilisi’s State Academy of Arts, Eteri Chkadua is known for her vivid and often outlandish portraits, in which minute attention is lavished on faces and facial expressions. Chkadua left Tbilisi and moved to the US after marrying the artist Kevin Tuite. At the time, however, the then-Soviet government regarded her paintings produced at the State Art Academy as government property, and refused to allow them to leave the country. After much bureaucratic shuffling, Chkadua was allowed to buy some of the paintings back, costing her father the equivalent of a month’s salary.

Hidden away behind an unassuming brick facade at 7 Kaspi Street, a fascinating relic of Georgia’s communist past survives intact, almost completely unknown to locals and visitors alike. Behind a pair of iron doors emblazoned with a large hammer and sickle, visitors can take a step back in time in a museum preserving the illegal printing press used by the young Josef Stalin at the turn of the 20th century. The yard contains the house used by Stalin and other revolutionaries, and a shed containing the well shaft which gave access to the underground chamber that still holds the original German printing machine. Struck off the list of government-supported museums, the exhibition is lovingly tended by Soso, an ebullient die-hard communist who survives on meagre donations and oversees the printing of a communist newspaper. Visitors are strongly advised not to question the curator’s strongly held beliefs – he’s been known to eject anti-communist visitors from the museum’s premises …

Mariam Sitchinava’s pictures provide a surreal but enchanting glimpse into the inner life of the Georgian capital, explored through fashion, faces and landscapes. Sitchinava’s Instagram was recently featured by Vogue magazine, heralding the arrival of the “best new it girls … from Georgia (the country, not the state)”. A large stone monument in front of the old parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue marks the spot where, on 9 April 1989, the Soviet Army violently dispersed a peaceful pro-independence rally using spades and batons, killing 20 civilians and injuring hundreds more. The public shock and anger at the horrific nature of the attack – the victims of which included many women and children – marked a turning point in Georgia’s struggle for independence from the Soviet Union. Two years later, approximately 90% of Georgians took part in a referendum on independence, paving the way for secession from the Soviet Union in May 1991. Originally from the small southern Georgian town of Bolnisi, Shota Adamashvili burst on to the Tbilisi music scene after appearing on a TV talent show, wowing audiences with his soulful performances of country music, despite having never visited the United States.

Visitors can catch Shota performing weekly in venues across the city. In a public opinion poll conducted by the National Democratic Institute last year, 43% of Tbilisians listed “pollution of the environment” as the main infrastructural problem if the city, followed closely by roads, traffic and parking. In recent years, private car use has increased astronomically in the capital, with long traffic jams and an increasing lack of parking spaces. Although the city is kept tidy by a dedicated army of street cleaners and rubbish collectors, the government has dragged its feet on recycling. In 2014, former prime minister and billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili announced a $500m (£350m) urban development project – Panorama Tbilisi – which included plans for a huge terraced hotel and commercial complex on a hill overlooking both the city centre and the botanical gardens. City conservation groups decried the planned construction as a monstrosity that would change the face of the city forever, imperilling the ongoing consideration of Tbilisi’s Old Town district for Unesco cultural heritage status.

Other critics maintained that Ivanishvili’s role as former prime minister and founder of the current ruling party (coupled with the fact that he was the single largest investor in the project) cast the shadow of corruption over the city authorities’ approval of the project. Preliminary construction work on the project is already underway, while an umbrella group of NGOs – uniting everyone from cultural heritage groups to students activists – are organising almost weekly protests. Although Georgia is renowned as a country of wine, Tbilisians love their beer too. On warm summer evenings crowds of men can be seen carrying five-litre bottles of the stuff straight from the tap of the Kazbegi brewery by the Mtkvari River. The chilled beer is prized for its freshness and is traditionally enjoyed with smoked and salted fish (sold at a number of well-stocked stalls nearby) and hunks of brown bread. While some locals will brave several lanes of busy traffic on the Sanapiro highway in order to enjoy their beer right on the riverside, others, including traders from the local Eliava Bazaar, flock to a make-shift outdoor canteen of rickety wooden benches and tables, located up a discreet flight of steps just north of the brewery.

A flat fee of 1 lari (33p) per person buys you the privilege of a clean sheet of newspaper on the table and access to a fetid lavatory.Barely a weekend goes by without a public demonstration of some kind in this city of just over a million people. For almost three years, a group of activists led by the organisation Guerrilla Gardening has managed to hold up construction work on a controversial hotel project in the middle of the city’s Vake Park, maintaining a constant presence in a protest camp next to the disputed site. In May 2013, a small group of around 50 activists marking the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) were set upon by participants of a thousands-strong counter-demonstration led by clergy of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Freelance journalist Joseph Alexander Smith fell in love with Tbilisi on a three day visit in 2011, and settled permanently there the following year. He gives guided tours of Tbilisi’s architectural treasures and is busy supporting ongoing protests against the Panorama Tbilisi project.