Quick answer
A supra is a Georgian feast run by a toastmaster, the tamada, who proposes every toast; guests speak on the theme in turn and drink only when a toast ends. The word means tablecloth, the current form dates from the 19th century, and Georgia put the tradition on its national intangible heritage list in 2017. There are two kinds: the festive keipi and the mourning kelekhi. As a guest you bring wine or sweets, wait for the first toast, never talk while someone is toasting, and prepare a short toast of your own, because you will be asked. Nobody expects you to match the drinking; they do expect you to raise the glass and say gaumarjos.
- Supra means
- Tablecloth
- Heritage list
- 2017
- Kinds
- Keipi, kelekhi
- Your toast
- Expected
It happens at a friend's house, at a winery in Kakheti, at a guesthouse in Svaneti when the host's cousins turn up, or at a wedding you were invited to on a Tuesday. A table appears with more dishes than it can hold, someone is put in charge of the toasts, and four hours later you understand the country better than any museum could manage. Georgian is the language of the whole thing, but the structure is easy to read once you know it, and the rules for a guest fit on one hand. Everything below was checked in September 2026: the history against Wikipedia's sourced account, the etiquette against our Georgian etiquette guide verified this month, and the prices for bookable supra evenings against GetYourGuide on 28 September.
What a supra is
The word supra (სუფრა) means tablecloth. Georgian borrowed it from the Persian sofre, which means the same thing, in the centuries when the court in Tbilisi took much of its ceremony from Safavid Iran, and it came to stand for everything laid on the cloth and everyone sitting round it. The feast itself is old; the drinking scenes in The Knight in the Panther's Skin are medieval. The toastmaster and the long, ordered toasts are not. The words tamada and sadghegrdzelo, the toast, do not appear in Georgian writing before the 19th century, and the philologist Levan Bregadze dates the modern form to the decades after the Russian annexation, spreading across the whole country by the century's end. The tradition was inscribed on Georgia's national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2017.
Two kinds exist. The keipi is the festive supra: birthdays, name days, weddings, holidays, guests, a deal to mark. The kelekhi is the sombre supra held after a burial, with its own toasts and its own silence. Both, whatever their size, are led by a tamada, and when there is no table the supra is laid on the ground. This guide is about the keipi, because that is the one a visitor gets invited to.
The tamada
The tamada (თამადა) is the toastmaster, and the whole evening runs through them. Only the tamada proposes a toast; everyone else develops it. A good one is eloquent, quick, funny when the table needs it and serious when it does not, and able to drink a great deal of wine without showing it. Losing composure is the one failure a tamada is not forgiven.
How the tamada is chosen depends on the size of the table. At a small family dinner the head of the household simply takes the role. At a wedding or a funeral the family asks a relative or friend known to be good at it, often weeks ahead. At a mid-sized table the guests choose: someone, usually the oldest, proposes a name, the others agree, and the proposer raises the first toast to the new tamada. If the person refuses, another name is put forward until someone accepts. The role is traditionally male and at village and formal tables it still almost always is; among friends in Tbilisi that is changing.
How the toasts work
A Georgian toast is not a clink and a sip. It is a short speech, and a round of them has a shape. The tamada names a theme and speaks on it, sometimes for a minute, sometimes for five. Guests lift their glasses while the tamada speaks but do not drink. Then the toast passes round the table, usually to the right, and each person who wants to speak takes up the theme, adds their own words and drains their glass when they finish. Someone who does not want to speak simply drinks after a line that lands. When the round is done the tamada proposes the next theme. Eating during all this is expected; talking is not.
The themes follow a pattern rather than a fixed list, and every tamada orders them differently. These are the ones you will hear at most festive tables, in roughly the order they arrive.
| Toast | When | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| To God, or to peace | Opening | One of the two opens most festive tables. Even secular hosts keep it. |
| To Georgia | Early | Sakartvelos gaumarjos. People often stand for this one. |
| To the reason for the table | Early | The birthday, the newlyweds, the guests who arrived from abroad. That may be you. |
| To parents, then to the departed | Middle | The table goes quiet for the dead. At many tables glasses are not clinked for this toast. |
| To children and the future | Middle | Usually follows the departed, so the table lifts again. |
| To friendship, to women, to the host | Late | The tamada chooses. The later it gets, the more personal the toasts become. |
Between the tamada's themes comes alaverdi (ალავერდი): the tamada hands the toast to a named guest, who continues it. This is where tables get personal. People tell the story of how they met the host, thank someone across the table for something ten years old, and occasionally reduce everyone to tears. When the alaverdi comes to you, it is not a test. Four sentences and gaumarjos is a complete toast.
The wine
Georgia has the oldest evidence of winemaking anywhere: grape residue in Neolithic pottery from Gadachrili Gora, south of Tbilisi, dated to more than 8,000 years ago. The method of fermenting wine on its skins in a buried clay qvevri was listed by UNESCO in 2013. At a supra the wine is usually homemade, often by the host's own family in the village, poured from jugs or plastic bottles into small glasses, and it is treated as the medium of the toasts rather than a drink to enjoy on its own. Our wine culture guide explains why it tastes the way it does.
The rules a guest needs are few. You drink when a toast ends, not between toasts, and the tamada or a neighbour will keep your glass full for the next one. Georgian men at the table usually empty the glass in one go; guests and women are given room to sip, and nobody will count. At formal tables a kantsi, a drinking horn, goes round for a particular toast, and a horn cannot be put down until it is empty, which is the point of it. Chacha, the grape spirit, is 40 percent alcohol in the commercial bottles and far stronger when home-distilled; it appears at some tables between toasts, and a firm no thank you is respected.
The food
An empty patch of tablecloth is a failure of hospitality, so plates are stacked on plates and the courses are not cleared between waves. The cold dishes are on the table before you sit, the breads and khachapuri follow, then the hot dishes arrive in rounds through the evening. Nobody is expected to finish anything. The one skill is pacing: eat slowly in the first hour, because the mtsvadi comes out when you think the meal is over. Our what to eat guide covers every dish below.
| Dishes | Course |
|---|---|
| On the table when you sit: pkhali (walnut and vegetable pastes), badrijani (aubergine rolls with walnut), jonjoli, fresh herbs, cheese, pickles, shotis puri bread | Cold |
| Khachapuri, usually Imeruli or Megruli at a home table, lobiani in Racha and the west, mchadi cornbread with the cheese | Breads |
| Mtsvadi grilled on vine cuttings, chicken in walnut or garlic sauce, chanakhi or chakapuli by season, khinkali if the family makes them | Hot |
| Tkemali sour plum sauce, adjika, satsebeli, and a bowl of salt and green chilli. Put them on everything. | Sauces |
| Fruit, churchkhela, gozinaki at New Year, pelamushi in autumn, and cake if it is a birthday | To finish |
Singing and dancing
Somewhere in the third hour someone starts a song and two others find the lower parts. Georgian polyphonic singing was proclaimed a masterpiece of intangible heritage by UNESCO in 2001 and inscribed on its representative list in 2008; at a supra it is three men who have sung Mravalzhamier since childhood, and it is better than any stage version. Dancing follows at weddings and at any table with room to push the chairs back. You will be pulled in; nobody minds how it goes. Our music and dance guide explains what you are hearing, and if no supra comes your way, where to hear polyphonic singing in Tbilisi lists the Sunday liturgies, concerts and dinner shows that will.
Keipi, kelekhi and the wedding
| Kind | Mood |
|---|---|
| Keipi, the festive supra. Birthdays, name days, guests, holidays, a deal closed. Singing, long toasts, wine until the tamada calls the last one | Loud and long |
| Kelekhi, the mourning supra after a burial. Toasts are shesandobari, for the dead; no singing, no clinking, a fixed order, and it ends sooner | Quiet and formal |
| Kortsili, the wedding. Hundreds of guests, a professional tamada, a band, dancing between courses, and it runs until the small hours | The biggest |
| A family dinner that turns into one. The head of the household takes the tamada role without anyone saying so, and the rules loosen | The one you will get |
If you are ever brought to a kelekhi, follow the table exactly: toasts are for the dead and the family, glasses are not clinked, nobody sings, and you leave when the person who brought you leaves.
Rules for a guest
These are the same rules our etiquette guide gives for any Georgian home, applied to the table.
| Rule | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Take your shoes off at the door and greet the oldest person first | On arrival | Slippers appear. The grandmother gets your handshake before anyone else. |
| Bring wine or sweets; flowers in odd numbers | Gift | Three, five or seven stems. Arriving empty-handed is noticed, an expensive gift is not needed. |
| Wait for the first toast before you drink | Drinking | Nobody sips before the tamada raises a glass. After that, drink when a toast ends, not between. |
| Eat during toasts, do not talk | Toasts | Chewing is fine. A side conversation while someone is speaking is the one real offence. |
| Do not clink for the departed | Toasts | Watch the table: if glasses stay down for a toast, keep yours down too. |
| Have a short toast ready | Your turn | You will be asked. Thank the host by name, say one true thing about Georgia, raise the glass, sit down. |
| Do not offer money, do offer to help, expect no | Leaving | Paying for a home meal insults the host. Offering to clear plates once is polite; insisting embarrasses them. |
Finding a supra as a visitor
A private invitation takes time and a real acquaintance, and it happens more often than you would think: a guesthouse host's family, a winemaker whose cellar you visited twice, the driver who took you to Kazbegi. Until then, the routes below get you a real table rather than a show with a tablecloth.
- A family guesthouse. In Kakheti, Svaneti, Racha and Tusheti the host's dinner is where most visitors meet their first tamada. It costs 20 to 30 GEL a head on top of the room (see our budget guide), and if the family has guests of its own that night you will be at the same table. Ask for dinner when you book, not when you arrive.
- A dinner-and-dance restaurant. Ethno Tsiskvili and Ethnographer in Dighomi and In the Shadow of Metekhi on the river run a staged evening nightly in season, from 20:00, with a tamada at some tables. Book by phone or Facebook, or through the packaged evenings below with a car back to your hotel.
- A cooking class in a home. You make khinkali and khachapuri with a Tbilisi family and then eat them at their table with their wine. It is the closest a booking gets to the real thing.
- A Kakheti day. The day trips from Tbilisi stop at family cellars where lunch is served at a long table; the wine host often takes the tamada role for an hour.
Six phrases for the table
| Georgian | Meaning |
|---|---|
| გაუმარჯოს (gaumarjos) | Cheers. Literally a wish for victory, said at the end of every toast. |
| ალავერდი (alaverdi) | Over to you. The tamada hands the toast to a guest to continue it. |
| მრავალჟამიერ (mravalzhamier) | Many years. Sung or said after a toast to a person, and the name of the song. |
| ძალიან გემრიელია (dzalian gemrielia) | Very tasty. The sentence that makes a host happiest. |
| მადლობა (madloba) | Thank you. Didi madloba is a big thank you. |
| სტუმარი ღვთისაა (stumari ghvtisaa) | A guest is from God. The proverb every host quotes when you refuse a third plate. |
Gaumarjos gets you through the evening, and one toast delivered in Georgian, however badly, gets you remembered. The toasting vocabulary is small and formulaic, which makes it learnable in an afternoon; EasyGeorgian's post on how Georgian toasts are built gives the set phrases and the order they come in.
Why it matters
Georgians will tell you the supra is where the language, the songs and the family memory were kept when other institutions could not be trusted with them, and that a toast to Georgia meant something particular in the years when saying it in public was unwise. Take that as the country's own account of itself rather than a history lesson, but notice what it explains: why the toasts are long, why the departed are toasted at every table, and why a stranger is fed as if the family's reputation depended on it. The proverb stumari ghvtisaa, a guest is from God, is the reason you will be given the best chair.
Mistakes first-timers make
- Filling up in the first hour. The cold table is the start, not the meal.
- Drinking between toasts. Sip water or lemonade; the wine waits for the tamada.
- Talking while someone toasts. The one thing that genuinely offends.
- A long toast. Sincere and short. Thank the host by name and sit down.
- Trying to keep pace. No one is timing you. Raise the glass every time; empty it when you choose.
- Offering money. A bottle of wine the next day, or an invitation in return, is the currency.
- Leaving without the round of goodbyes. Thank the tamada and the host before you go; slipping out is noticed.
Frequently asked questions
Can I go to a supra if I do not drink alcohol?
How long does a supra last?
What do I do when the tamada asks me to toast?
Is there food for vegetarians at a supra?
Can a woman be tamada?
Do I have to empty my glass every time?
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