Whisky Magazine
Celebrating whiskies of the world

Issue 72 of Whisky Magazine out now!

Issue 72 Out Now

Read - Buy - Subscribe

Quick Links

Buy back issues
Cocktails
Distilleries
Find a whisky
Forums and chat
Independent bottlers
Magazine archive
News
Nosing & Tasting Course
Subscribe
Tasting notes
Whisky and food
Whisky Glossary



Search

Join Whiskymag.com Now
MAGAZINE
SUBSCRIBE
STORE
FEATURES
WHISKIES
DIRECTORY
FORUMS
This Issue (72)  |  Subscribe  |  Back Issues  |  Authors Index  |  Category Index
Issue 59   |  Buy this issue   |  Other issues
Whisky Magazine Issue 59

Published in Whisky Magazine Issue 59 on 11/10/2006.

This article is 22 months old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements.

Copyright Whisky Magazine © 1999-2008. All rights reserved. To use or reproduce part or all of this article please contact us for details of how you can do so legally.

The curiosity of travel

Jefferson Chase on the drinking culture in Georgia

Good travel writing makes you curious about places you'd never want to go to. In Wendell Steavenson’s Stories I Stole, that place is Georgia – a den of lawlessness full of boozing, jesting, musical, gun toting, and not quite likable hillbillies.

Lest there be any misunderstandings, the Georgia we’re talking about is not the American state of Ray Charles fame, but the former Soviet republic in the Southern Caucasus. And the author, despite being called Wendell, is a female Time magazine reporter who spent two years based in Tbilisi for reasons not entirely clear even to herself.

The first trouble Steavenson gets herself into is the tamada, a drinking ceremony intended to welcome guests and allow the hosts to show off.

It was a kind of aggression. When they did not know you well, they filled your glass and filled it again and carefully watched how you drank it. This was their measure of you; this was done to disarm you. Georgian to Georgian, between friends and family, at funerals and birthdays, for meeting and for parting, the toasting was less belligerent. The quantities, however, were still fairly large and could provoke either love or violence. This was the Georgian way, friend or enemy with nothing in between. History was lost in tradition, drinking a way of remembering and forgetting.

Steavenson has a keen eye for the subtexts of social rituals, including drinking sessions. You can almost feel the hangover coming the morning after this one.

Unfortunately for St.....

To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue or subscribe to Whisky Magazine to have every issue delivered direct to your door.

You can unlock and read this entire article with 1 of your community tokens by clicking here.

By Jefferson Chase

Section : Whisky Literature

Page number : 47