Why go
Lagodekhi sits at Georgia's southeastern edge, a frontier town where the Caucasus mountains yield to the Alazani Valley's last slopes. First fortified in the 8th century under the name Lakuasti, the town's soul lies in Lagodekhi Protected Areas, established in 1912 as one of the world's earliest nature reserves—Tsarist Russia's scientific elite recognized these 19,000 hectares of primeval beech and hornbeam forests, where brown bears still roam and the Ninoskhevi River has carved waterfalls into limestone gorges. Below, family vineyards work iron-rich alluvial soils to produce Kakheti's most mineral whites, particularly the crisp, saline Kisi and Mtsvane that speak of this liminal terroir—neither mountain nor plain, but both.