🛍️ Georgia: souvenirs
Georgia bottles eight thousand years of wine culture - plus felt, enamel and the sweets of the Silk Road. Here is what travellers bring home from Georgia, where the good versions live, and the export questions worth a look - alongside our 100 written places.
🛒 The classic buys
Qvevri wine
Amber wines from clay vessels, the world's oldest wine tradition - buy from wine shops that ship or pack properly; saperavi and rkatsiteli are the gateway grapes.
Chacha
The grape spirit from named distillers - labelled bottles for the flight home.
Cloisonne enamel
Minankari jewellery in jewel colours - a revived medieval craft from Tbilisi workshops.
Churchkhela and spices
The walnut-and-grape-must 'Georgian snickers' strings, plus svan salt and khmeli suneli blends.
Felt and wool
Felt hats and slippers from mountain traditions, and Tusheti wool socks.
Drinking horns and ceramics
The kantsi horn of the supra table and clay wine vessels in every size.
⚠️ Check before you buy
- Wine counts against duty-free limits fast - shops ship abroad as the workaround.
- Items over 50 years (icons especially) need culture-ministry export permits.
- Churchkhela is fresh food - fine for most borders as a packaged sweet, but check strict destinations.
✗ Better left behind
- Old icons from flea markets - export-restricted heritage.
- Soviet-era militaria of unclear origin - reproductions avoid the questions.
Markets shift, workshops close and open, and the best souvenir is still the one with a story you were there for. Buy from makers where you can, keep receipts for anything substantial, and when a deal feels too good, it usually is.