What to Buy in Georgia: Souvenirs Worth Carrying Home (2026)

Dezerter Bazaar

07:00-17:00

Dry Bridge

10:00-17:00

Svan salt, 100 g

5-8 GEL

Lurji supra

18-100 GEL

The short list

Most visitors do their shopping in the last hour, in an Old Town lane, and come home with a magnet shaped like khachapuri. Georgia deserves better than that, because it makes a handful of things nobody else makes. This is the list we give friends, in the order we would spend the money.

1. Svan salt and the spice shelf. Salt pounded with garlic, blue fenugreek, coriander and chilli, sold loose by the 100 g at the bazaar. Weighs nothing, costs 5 to 8 GEL (about $2 to $3), and changes how you cook eggs for a year.
2. A lurji supra. The indigo block-printed tablecloth of the Georgian feast, hand-printed on cotton or linen at the Academy of Arts workshop for 18 to 100 GEL. The polyester ones in the Old Town are printed by machine and fade.
3. Cloisonne enamel (minankari). Silver wire soldered into cells and filled with coloured glass, a technique Georgia has used since the medieval period. Buy it from a maker with a name, not from a stall.
4. Wine you cannot get at home. Amber qvevri wine from a small producer, bought at the cellar door or a proper wine shop, packed in the middle of a checked bag.
5. Felt and knitted wool. Svan caps, Tushetian slippers, thick socks from the grandmothers at the Dry Bridge. Cheap, light, and used every winter.

Food and drink

Spices and Svan salt

Go to the Dezerter Bazaar by Station Square and find the spice lanes, where everything is sold loose from sacks and the vendors let you smell and taste. The prices below are what our markets guide recorded there this year. The pretty boxed spice sets in the Old Town hold the same things, stale, at several times the price.

Ask for the vendor's own khmeli-suneli mix and they will grind it while you wait for the same price as the ready-made blend. Adjika, the chilli paste, comes red and green; a taste of each is expected before you choose. Tkemali, the sour plum sauce, and adjika travel fine in a checked bag inside a zip bag, and both count as plant products at most borders.

Churchkhela

The strings of walnuts dipped in thickened grape must that hang from every market stall. Made properly it is chewy, nutty and only as sweet as the grapes; made for tourists it is rubbery and glossy with sugar. Bend one: it should give, not snap. The bazaar sells a string for 3 to 8 GEL and lets you taste; the Old Town charges more for worse. Freshly made churchkhela is at its best in October, straight after the harvest, which is when the Kakheti stalls have the new batch.

Bazaar shopping is one of the few times in Georgia where English stops working, because the spice women and the sock grandmothers are not in the tourist trade. Numbers get you a long way: prices are said aloud, weights are argued over, and a buyer who can count to twenty in Georgian gets the local tone rather than the tourist one. EasyGeorgian's post on counting in Georgiancovers the ten minutes of learning that matter.

Wine

Georgia's qvevri method, fermenting wine in clay vessels buried to the neck, is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list and produces the amber wines that taste of nowhere else. That is what to carry home; a supermarket Kindzmarauli is fine for dinner here and forgettable on your shelf. Buy at the cellar door in Kakheti, where the bottle usually comes with the tasting, or in Tbilisi at a shop that also pours: our wine bars guide lists small-grower bottles at 65 to 85 GEL on the list at DADI and a 5 GEL discount at Wine Not? for any bottle you carry out, and 8000 Vintages has the widest shelf in the city. Restaurant bottles run 25 to 60 GEL, so a shop price above that is buying the producer, not the wine.

Chacha

The grape spirit. Home-distilled chacha is poured at every supra and sold in plastic bottles at markets, and that is where it should stay: the strength is unknown and a customs officer cannot tell it from anything else. For a gift, buy a labelled bottle from a distillery or a wine shop with the alcohol content printed on it. It goes in checked luggage and counts against the spirits allowance below.

Honey

Mountain honey from Tusheti, Svaneti and Racha is sold in reused jars at the bazaar and by the roadside in the highlands, and it is good. It is also one of the few animal products most countries let in: the EU and Great Britain allow up to 2 kg a person from outside the EU, and the US admits it for personal use. Tape the lid, bag it, and pack it in the middle of a checked bag. Jars bought at Bazari Orbeliani are labelled and sealed, which helps if an inspector asks.

Crafts

Cloisonne enamel (minankari)

Thin silver wire is soldered onto a silver base to draw the design, the cells are filled with powdered glass in colour, and the piece is fired until the glass fuses. The medieval Georgian enamels in Tbilisi's museums are the standard the modern makers work towards. You will find pendants, earrings, rings and crosses in every souvenir shop, and most of what is sold cheaply is a printed sticker under a glass dome, not enamel at all.

The test is the back and the weight. Real cloisonne shows the wire outlines from behind and small irregularities where a hand placed them; it has the weight of silver and a hallmark stamped on the mount. Printed pieces are light, perfectly uniform and priced like a keyring. The reliable places are the makers themselves: EthnoDesign sells enamel from named artisans with a card about each, One Village One Product stocks Ikorta, a workshop in the Tserovani settlement near Mtskheta that trains women displaced in 2008 and sells sterling silver pieces, and Gallery 27 runs enamel workshops in its Sololaki house. Expect to pay for silver and hours of work, and ask the seller who made it; a shop that cannot say is selling the sticker.

Lurji supra, the blue tablecloth

The indigo cloth with white patterns is the one textile every Georgian household owns for the feast. The traditional version is block-printed by hand onto cotton or linen; the version in most Old Town shops is polyester printed by machine, which looks the same on a shelf and does not after the first wash. The place to buy the real one is the small printing workshop on the grounds of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts at Griboedov Street 22, entered through the gate at the north-west end. The staff keep a range of sizes and colours on hand, prices run from 18 to 100 GEL, they take cards, and it opens daily from 10:00 to 16:30 with a break in the second half of August; a Tbilisi shopping guide updated in March 2026 confirmed all of that. Gallery 27 and One Village One Product sell the same workshop's cloths if the gate is shut.

Felt and wool

The Svan cap, the round grey felt hat with a stitched cross, is sold by the box in Mestia and by the handful at the Dry Bridge. Tushetian felt slippers and the thick wool socks the village grandmothers knit are sold at the handicraft end of the Dry Bridge in 9 March Park, and Funduki, a Tbilisi label stocked at One Village One Product, does a hand-knitted slipper in the Tushetian patterns. All of it is cheap, light and used. Pick a Svan cap that is stiff and dense; a floppy one is thin felt.

Ceramics

Traditional pieces are the ketsi, the clay dish khachapuri and mushrooms are baked in, small decorative qvevri and the red-clay jugs and bowls of the west. Orkol Studio in Zugdidi makes the Megrelian wine jug the shop is named after and its bowls are sold at One Village One Product. Tbilisi has a good run of contemporary studios in Vera and Chugureti, listed with addresses in the same March 2026 shopping guide, if you want tableware rather than folk pieces. A ketsi is worth carrying: it is unglazed, cheap and cooks as well as anything you own.

The drinking horn (kantsi)

The polished horn is what the toastmaster drinks from at a supra, and the point of it is that it cannot be put down until it is empty. Plain horns are sold at the Dry Bridge handicraft stalls; silver-mounted ones come from jewellers. Wrap the tip in clothing, because it is the part that breaks, and pack it in checked luggage. It is a decorative object, but a mounted horn with a metal tip has been questioned at security screening; the receipt settles it.

Carpets and kilims

Kakheti had a weaving tradition, and Caucasian kilims turn up at the Dry Bridge and in the antique shops at the Atoneli Street end of it. Most of what is laid out on the pavement is new; the old pieces are inside the shops. If you buy an old one, this is exactly the kind of object Georgia's export law covers, so read the customs section before you pay and get the seller to put the age in writing on the receipt. Pesvebi Art Studio in Dedoplistskaro, a social enterprise reviving the Kiziki weaving of eastern Kakheti, sells wool bags woven like a kilim through One Village One Product, which is the easier way to take the pattern home.

Where to buy in Tbilisi

The same object can cost three times as much on the Meidan as at the bazaar or the maker's own shop. Addresses and hours for the shops below come from a Tbilisi shopping guide updated in March 2026 and from our own markets guide, checked this month.

The Dry Bridge in practice

The flea market spreads across the Dry Bridge, which is dry because the river was embanked and it now crosses a road, and into the parks either side: Dedaena Park to the east, rebuilt in 2021 with proper pitches, and 9 March Park to the west. It runs daily from 10:00 to 17:00, thin on weekday mornings and full on Saturday and Sunday from about 11:00, and empties in heavy rain. It is a twelve-minute walk from Liberty Square metro down through Orbeliani Square and Atoneli Street, or a short Bolt ride.

Four parts, easy to miss if you only walk the bridge. The flea market proper is the pavement on both sides of the bridge and the edge of 9 March Park: medals, cameras, samovars, silverware, Soviet ephemera laid on carpets. The handicraft stalls are inside 9 March Park: felt, knitted socks and slippers, drinking horns, panduri. The painters hang canvases on stands along the embankment through both parks, Pirosmani copies next to real work. And the antiques are downstairs, in a separate section reached by a flight of steps off the embankment opposite 9 March Park, stacked with porcelain, chandeliers and dinner services; most visitors never find it.

• Cash only, small notes. Withdraw in the centre before you walk down.
• Prices open high for foreigners. Offer well under, meet in the middle, stay friendly, and walk away if it does not move; nobody follows you.
• Silver is hallmarked; look for the stamp. "Antique" wood that smells of shoe polish is not. Soviet medals are mostly real because millions were made, and the ones sold as rare mostly are not.
• Photographs of the stalls are fine; ask before a portrait. Russian works better than English with the older sellers.

Outside Tbilisi

The best buying is at the source. In Kakheti, wine at the cellar door and churchkhela and walnuts from the roadside stalls in October; the Sighnaghi guide and the wineries guide say which cellars sell bottles. In Svaneti, the felt caps and wool socks sold around Mestia's centre and by the women in Ushguli, and Svan salt from the household that made it. In Tusheti, felt, guda cheese for eating on the spot and honey from Omalo's few shops. Kutaisi's Green Bazaar, open daily and fullest after 10:00, is the western equivalent of the Dezerter for Imeretian cheese, churchkhela and spices, and Zugdidi has Orkol Studio for clay.

What to skip

• Magnets and the khachapuri keyring. Made abroad, the same in every capital. If you want one, the hand-painted ceramic magnets at Estia in Chugureti are at least made here.
• Decorative daggers. The cheap khanjali on every Old Town stall are imported and rust. Real Georgian silverwork on a blade costs hundreds and, if it is old, needs the export permit below. It is also the one souvenir that gets a bag opened at every airport on the way home.
• Printed enamel. A cloisonne pendant at the price of a coffee is a sticker under glass. Save the money for one real piece.
• Boxed spice sets and gift churchkhela. The same goods as the bazaar, older, at a multiple of the price.
• Big-brand semi-sweet wine. Sold in supermarkets abroad already. Carry an amber wine from a producer you visited instead.
• Cheese and sausage. Not because they are bad, but because your border will take them.

Getting it home

Georgia is relaxed about what leaves, with one exception covered below. The problems are at your own border, and the rules differ enough by destination that it is worth reading the row for yours. This table was checked against the EU's travellers' page, the UK government's food and duty-free pages and the US Department of Agriculture's traveller pages in September 2026.

Georgia's export permit for cultural valuables

The Law of Georgia on the Export and Import of Cultural Property requires a permit from the Ministry of Culture to take cultural valuables out of the country. The category is wide: archaeological finds, icons and religious objects, old manuscripts and coins, seals, withdrawn stamps, furniture more than 100 years old, rare instruments and artworks of historical value. A Tbilisi law firm's summary of the procedure describes a written application with photographs to the National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation, an answer within 15 days, and a one-off permit valid for three months for a fee of 14 GEL; exporting without one is a criminal offence, even if prosecutions are rare. In practice: a new painting, a felt hat or a Soviet badge is not a cultural valuable, and a 19th-century icon, an antique carpet or a coin hoard may be. Ask the seller directly whether the piece needs a permit, get the age on the receipt, and if you are spending serious money on something old, apply before your flight or have the dealer do it.

Packing

• Bottles: checked luggage, each in a sleeve or a sock, upright in the middle of the bag surrounded by clothes. Two bottles is the sensible limit for most allowances and most shoulders.
• Jars and sauces: lid taped, in a zip bag, then in the middle of the bag. Bottles of tkemali leak under cabin pressure more often than jars.
• Spices and churchkhela: paper, then a bag. Cabin or hold, either is fine.
• Tablecloths and felt: roll, do not fold; the Academy cloths are printed with a dye that likes a cool wash.
• Horns, ceramics and enamel: wrapped in clothing, never at the edge of the bag. Carry the enamel in your hand luggage.

Mistakes

• Buying everything in the last hour on the Meidan. Give the Dezerter Bazaar a morning early in the trip and the Academy workshop an afternoon; both close at 17:00 and 16:30.
• Arriving at the Dry Bridge on a Monday morning. It is half empty; go at the weekend after 11:00.
• Paying for "silver" enamel that weighs nothing. Turn it over first.
• Packing cheese for Europe. It will be taken at the airport, and you may be fined for not declaring it.
• Buying an old icon or carpet with no receipt and no thought about the permit.
• Carrying wine in hand luggage. It goes in the hold, and a bottle bought at the duty-free shop stays sealed in its bag through any connection.

Keep planning

Food & Wine

Tbilisi Markets 2026: Dezerter Bazaar, Dry Bridge, Navtlugi

Every Tbilisi market worth your time: Dezerter Bazaar hours and spice prices, the Dry Bridge flea market, Navtlugi's flea sheds, Bazari Orbeliani, the Gold Market.

14 min read

Food & Wine

Best Wine Bars in Tbilisi 2026: Where to Drink and Taste

Ten Tbilisi wine bars with addresses, what each is good for and what a glass costs in 2026, plus guided tastings from 40 GEL and how to order Georgian wine.

11 min read

Culture

Georgian Culture and Etiquette: Rules Visitors Miss

The unwritten rules of Georgia: hospitality and the polite refusal, home visits, church dress, toasting, gifts, body language, superstitions, what not to say.

14 min read