Chacha! ..

The magic word "chacha". For friendship, for parents, for love, Georgians pronounce the first toasts when tasting the strongest and delicious grape vodka of home production. How a chacha is born from a new crop grape - I had a chance to see The New Times

Ermile returned with chacha in a three -liter jar, with moldy cookies in a paper bag and dried apples ...
I plunged a glass into a jar with two fingers and took out full to the edges.
- Be healthy! Not very strong ... Deck, you don’t drink, or what?
- I drink, how!
- Can I water? And then he burns very much, - one of the guests turned to Pavel.
- What is he? The owner asked.
- He asks for water.
- Yes, she is not strong, why does he need water? ..
After Chachi, he went a hard, heavy step; Having produced a short -haired gray head, as if his thickets made his way into the house and back - brought water to the countess. - A little warm ...
Rezo Cheishvili. "Polodeznik"

In the Georgian Lavra of the Vedzhini, we admitted the rector in our cherished desire - to see how Chachu was doing. After these words, a plastic bottle appeared on the table.

- You will be a chacha! - said Father John. - Everything will be!

The next day, we were casually introduced to the person, about whom Father John said that this is the owner of the vineyards, where the harvest of the Rkacitators was still ongoing. In the morning, he had to pick us up on a mountain road in a agreed place.

The clusters in October when, after two hours of barren expectation by the road, we already decided how to spend the unexpectedly free day, a white “six” stopped near us. An unfamiliar Georgian was sitting behind the wheel.

- I have to pick you up in Chandari?

The driver of the "Six" was called Guram. He learned about our existence 15 minutes ago: the owner of the vineyards remembered us at a business meeting and immediately contacted a local taxi. We soon knew about Gurama the most important thing: he lived in Yakutia for nine years, worked as a trucker, of course, all the local beauties were in love with a young Georgian, and getting out of the north, he was the richest groom, and even a diplomat and employee of Sberbank swatt his daughter for him. Wah!

After half an hour, Walls on the dusty roads Gura stopped the car at the tractor trailer filled with freshly cut clusters.

Despite the October, the sun was fired mercilessly, women in huge straw hats and panamas, not sparing the hunched backs, cut a bunch of clusters behind the bunches. The hands sticky from grape juice shone, and flies and wasps swarmed above the buckets. The men carried the filled buckets to the truck, which replaced the tractor, and took the empty ones. In the back, leaning on sticky sides and balancing the floor of crushed berries slippery from the juice, the brigadier Zurab took buckets and, as if trying to put out the fire, generously scattered grapes of grapes throughout the body.

Having passed several rows of a vineyard, women sat down in the shade of trees to rest and, not letting the coathers from sticky hands, have fun discussing what was happening around. Having caught his breath, having drunk water and rinse their hands, they again dispersed along the lines, behind them, smelling, men stretched. The truck drove several meters, Zurab again climbed into the body, and again insects, grape juice in their hands were swarming over the buckets, and only rare clouds gave the peasants a little rest from the scorching sun.

From the vineyard, Guram, without accepting excuses, took us to his home. While his wife was preparing simple snacks, and the eldest son David pushed wine in the countesses, the owner of the house proudly showed us a breathing and seething grapes, which soon had to turn into the “most Georgian drink”. There were two barrels of grapes. In one juice, he was preparing to become white wine, in the other - red. For a year, guram usually harvests a thousand liters of wine and two hundred liters of chachi.

For a long time in Georgia, wine has not been poured into the famous clay jugs of Kvevri, now the wine is born in huge iron and plastic barrels, laid out from the inside with polyethylene, and is stored in home chulans in huge glass bottles.

Sitting down at the table, Guram asked his daughter to bring “tools”. After a languid expectation, two cow horns appeared on the table. These were not multi-liter festive horns, but small, with a container in a glass. However, the very everyday life of this tradition was delighted. We sat at Guram a visit for a long time and drank more than one liter of both young and last year's wine. The owner spoke endless Georgian toasts, and we have peacefully hungry.

The factory in the yard a couple of days after the trip to the Chandari vineyards, we were invited to another event related to grapes. In one Tbilisi courtyard, ten men gathered in the garage to squeeze the grapes for wine and, of course, immediately note this matter. However, the road to Tbilisi was unforeseen long, and upon arrival we disappointedly found out that all the grapes were already squeezed out. Only a feast fell on our share. Children played in the courtyard, under the ropes of linen, a TV was heard from the open window, and there were three barrels on the open garage gates, on which bread, cheese, and greens lay. The toast was replaced by a toast, the tamada transferred Alaverds to everyone, and the countesses and wine did not empty. After it became dark and a small bulb in the garage began to lack, candles appeared on the barrels among the dishes, and the feast became more comfortable, although the people by this time increased significantly. Only the next day did we learn that forty liters of wine were drunk that evening.

We walked days, we traveled a lot, participated in many feasts, drank many liters of wine, and did not see how to drive a chacha. Only two days before departure, finally, was lucky. Under the friendly barking of dogs, the abbot entered the monastery yard. Father John, leaving the car, led the unloading of food and as if in between:

- Get ready. Let's go to the factory.

Five minutes later, we rolled along a winding road to the valley. Going down from the ridge, they jumped to the village of Vedzhini, to travel to a large highway. So, go far. But the car suddenly stopped at the extreme house.

The metal gate opened, and in front of us there was a short man with a charming hoppy smile on his face.

“Merab Mikhailovich,” the man introduced himself, taking the stress in the middle name on the letter “o”, and held out his hand. - The director of the plant. Behind the gates there were no buildings from silicate bricks, no smoking pipes, nor scurrying workers in overalls - the quiet backyard of the rural two -story building, and the plant was called a small shed with a reed canopy and enormous sizes of a moonshine apparatus inside. There was a table with a west and decanters, five men were sitting at the table and fresh products were tasted with might and main.

The “chief technologist of the plant” Archil was responsible directly for the preparation of the drink, he led us to the unit and, showing us to a small crane at the bottom of the tank, from which a transparent stream flowed into the aluminum pan, mysteriously said:

- In! This is her! - Then he scooped up a good stack from the pan. - Try!

Chacha was almost hot and very strong. It was worth the big work not to wrinkle and smile, returning the stack:

- Thank you! Very tasty!

“Drink, drink it to the end,” Archil and Merib looked, smiling.

Apparently, having read the horror on my face, the Georgians laughed and, putting it at the table, poured chilled chachi.

“This is weaker,” Archil reassured. “There is somewhere forty-three to five degrees.”

- Do you measure the alcoholmer?

- Why an alcoholmer? And so everything is visible.

Archil again went to the saucepan, took two piles, scooped up a chachu into one of them and began, carefully peering, methodically pour from one pile to another. Having finished the procedure, he authoritatively stated:

-Seventy-two plus or minus two degrees! I have been doing this for forty years, I am better than any alcoholmer.

- How do you determine?

- By bubbles!

- And seventy degrees - not a lot?

-This is now seventy, then it will go weaker, then even weaker and at the end there will be about forty-five.

We drank the treasured tap for friendship, then for the parents, then for love. We met a friend of childhood Metrab Bichiko - at the "factory" he is the main taster and unsurpassed toastmish. In Soviet times, Bichiko was a party official, now proudly calls himself a good pensioner. We drank a hospitable house, then for the owner ...

UAZ-“Bukhanka” drove into the gate. They brought the overwhelming squeeze - the waste production waste, this is a gas station for the challenge of the chachi. Archilly scrapped the clay from the cover of the boiler, embedded in the furnace, threw out what was left in the boiler with a shovel. His son Nico dragged several buckets of fresh refueling from the car. By loading the squeeze into the boiler, added water, the copper cover was again smeared with clay. Nico brought a huge log and began to push it into the stove. As if resisting, the stove spit out a sheaf of sparks, then the second, but soon lost. The copper coil was lost in a huge tank of water, a stream of chachi again ran from the already familiar faucet.

It began to darken. Merab turned on the light bulb, insects immediately spaced around it. We again sat down at the table, over which the portrait of Stalin hung. We drank again for friendship.

Merab is brewing a chacha for almost his whole life. Before retirement, in addition to home, he was engaged in industrial production. He was in a leadership at the enterprise where Archil worked as a technologist. Now in the same "posts" they drive chachu for themselves and their loved ones.

The son of Merab has long moved to Tbilisi, he has his own business. I wanted to take it to the city and parents, but the Merab flatly refused.

- Here is my homeland! - said Merab, showing his hand around.

A large two -story house around which chickens run. A wife is sitting on an embroidery on the balcony, in the backyard a reed canopy, old friends are sitting at the table, and a chacha flows into an aluminum pan ...

Remember how Abdullah from the “White Sun of the Desert” said: “What else does a person need to adequately meet old age?”

Wine is crushed from freshly glued grapes ...

... and the peaks go to the production of chachi

Chachi production apparatus is the main unit of mini-advocate.

The finished product is tasted by the whole small team