Feast Like a Georgian: A Food Guide to the Caucasus.

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2017

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dan Saladino travels to a Georgia, considered to be an undiscovered food and drink gem at the heart of the meeting point between Europe and Asia.

Food writer Carla Capalbo, author of Tasting Georgia: A food and wine journey in the Caucasus guides Dan through a supra, a traditional feast.

Georgia, a country the same size as Scotland, south of Russia and north of Turkey, has one of the oldest, richest and, to many of us, unknown food and drink cultures in the world. On the silk and spice routes, for centuries, it was a battleground between Persian, Turkish and Russian empires. In the 20th century, Georgia, birthplace of Stalin, became part of the Soviet Union until its independent in 1991.

Throughout generations of conflict and hardship Georgia's food culture has endured. It can claim to be the birthplace of viticulture and wine making and when it comes to dining experiences, it has one of the most sophisticated and emotional dining experiences in the world. Dan experiences a supra, a traditional Georgian feast, in which an array of dishes are woven around a series of polyphonic (many voice) songs, amber wines and heartfelt toasts given by a tomada (toast master).

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
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0:15.3	What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism
0:19.8	and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.
0:23.7	And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject
0:28.4	you might not even have thought you were interested in.
0:30.2	Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,
0:36.1	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	This is the BBC.
0:49.0	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme. Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it. Welcome. Please take a seat because together we're going to feast like Georgians.
1:08.0	What we are about to experience in terms of a combination of food, wine and sound, what's about to happen?
1:18.0	What we call a supra in Georgian, which is a feast?
1:22.0	The way Georgians drink, the toast, do the songs, it's one
1:26.8	the most elaborate and sophisticated ways to enjoy food and people in life, and it's really
1:32.3	special. You're going to enjoy.
1:33.4	Still with me ready good we've a lot to learn and luckily we are most welcome
1:40.8	the guest is considered a gift from God in Georgia. They've lived for
1:46.2	so long with so much persecution and invasion that if a guest comes in peace, they are the most welcome person at the table.
1:56.0	It's like social glue.
1:57.2	It's the thing that has saved them from the persecution of so many other different countries
2:01.6	or even the domination of other countries.
	...

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