Tbilisi and Kakheti Wine Region

Tbilisi layers 1,500 years of history into one walkable riverside city: Persian-style bath domes, carved wooden balconies, a Soviet avenue and a glass bridge, all beneath the Narikala fortress. Sulphur springs gave the city its name and still steam in the Abanotubani district. The cable car, the flea market, the courtyard cafes and the natural-wine bars each tell a different era. Few capitals reward simple wandering so richly.

Georgians have been making wine for at least 8,000 years, and in Kakheti the method has never changed: fermentation in qvevri, great clay vessels buried in the earth, now protected by UNESCO. Family cellars pour amber and ruby wines you will simply not taste anywhere else. Between tastings rise some of the country's greatest monuments: Alaverdi's soaring cathedral, fortified Gremi, hilltop Nekresi. Come hungry, because the Kakhetian table is Georgia's most generous.

Sighnaghi sits on a hilltop ringed by a complete 18th-century wall: 23 towers and four kilometres of battlements you can actually walk. Below the pastel lanes and carved balconies, the Alazani Valley spreads out toward the snow wall of the Caucasus. The town's marriage house works around the clock, which is how Sighnaghi earned its nickname, the 'city of love'. Add nearby Bodbe Convent, resting place of St Nino, and you have Kakheti's most romantic stop.