Chacha in Georgia: What It Is, How Strong, How to Drink It

Bottled

40-50%

Home still

up to 85%

Bottle, 0.5 l

13-115 GEL

Driving limit

0.03%

Every wine country distils what is left in the press, and Georgia, which has made wine for about 8,000 years, has been doing it longest. Chacha is the result: the household spirit of the wine regions, kept in unlabelled bottles, offered to guests as a matter of course, and now also made by every winery with a shop. This page is the practical version: what it is, how strong, the styles, where you will meet it and how to handle the glass. For the wine it comes from, start with our wine culture guide; for the table it is poured at, the supra guide.

What chacha is

Chacha (ჭაჭა) is a pomace brandy, the Georgian cousin of Italian grappa and French marc. The word does double duty: it is the spirit, and it is also the pomace itself, the mass of skins, seeds and stalks in the press or the qvevri, which is why a wine described as fermented on its chacha is an amber skin-contact wine and not a fortified one. Most chacha is clear and unaged. Some producers rest it in oak, which turns it gold and softens it, and some distil it from other fruit, figs, mulberries, quince or feijoa, or steep it with tarragon; all of those are still called chacha, and the word has become the general Georgian term for a fruit distillate. Chacha is a protected Georgian designation of origin under the 2005 law on appellations and geographical indications, the same law that protects Tsinandali and Khvanchkara.

How it is made

The logic is thrift. After the harvest the grapes are pressed and the juice, with or without its skins, goes into the qvevri to become wine. The pomace still holds sugar and juice, so it is left to ferment on its own, then run through a still; in the villages that is a copper pot in the yard, fired once the wine is safely fermenting, and the spirit is collected in whatever bottles are to hand. The first and last runnings are what make a bad chacha harsh, and a careful household discards them; a careless one does not. Wineries do the same thing with a column still, filter the spirit and bottle it at a stated strength. The distilling season follows the harvest: in Kakheti, which grows about seventy percent of the country's grapes, the stills run from October into November, and a family cellar visited then will show you both ends of the process. Our rtveli guide covers the harvest weeks.

How strong it is

This is the part visitors get wrong. Bottled chacha is labelled at 40 to 50 percent: the three menus we read in Tbilisi in September 2026 listed a house chacha at 50 percent and two named cellars at 40 and 45. Homemade chacha is not measured, and the range in the literature runs up to about 85 percent. A household's chacha can be gentler than a bottled one or nearly twice as strong, and the host, who has drunk it for forty years, will describe it as light either way. The small glass is not a courtesy; it is the correct dose. Chacha also drinks smoother than its strength, which is how a second glass happens. If you want to know what you are holding, ask whether it is homemade or bought, and whether it has been filtered; a clear answer of a named winery and a stated percentage is a different drink from a plastic bottle with no label.

Styles and flavours

Region shows in the glass: Kakhetian chacha tends to the oak and the weight, western Georgia's is lighter and fruitier, and the mountain regions distil from whatever grows, so a Svan or Tush "chacha" may be made of fruit or honey and called something else. The big Kakheti houses (Teliani Valley, Telavi Wine Cellar, Chateau Mukhrani, whose chacha took gold at the Hong Kong competition in 2011) make the bottles you will see in supermarkets; the small family cellars make the ones worth seeking out.

Where you meet it

How to drink it

What it costs

At the National Bank's rate on 29 September 2026 (2.61 GEL to the dollar), 13 GEL is about $5 and 73 GEL about $28. A single pour in a restaurant is priced by the place and we have not put a number on it; it sits between a glass of house wine and a cocktail. Supermarket bottles from the big houses fall between the house and the named-cellar prices above.

Buying and taking it home

Buy a sealed bottle from a named producer: a wine shop such as 8000 Vintages on Tabukashvili Street, a winery shop in Kakheti, or a supermarket for the big houses. The label should state the strength, and a cellar that made it can tell you whether it was filtered and how long it rested. The flavoured craft bottles are the expensive end. Homemade chacha in a recycled water bottle is a lovely thing to be given and a poor thing to travel with: the strength is unknown, it looks like anything, and a customs officer cannot tell it from anything else. Sealed bottles go in checked luggage inside your home country's spirits allowance; Tbilisi airport's duty-free shops sell wine and chacha for the last-minute case. Batumi's chacha tower, the 25-metre clock tower built in 2012 whose fountain ran with chacha for a few minutes a week, was demolished in 2024, so do not go looking for it. Our souvenirs guide covers what else to carry home.

Mistakes

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