Imeretians Erotic

Imeretians are Georgians, full stop. What sets them apart is place and memory. They are the people of Imereti, the humid middle of western Georgia, running from the edge of the Colchian lowland up into the wooded hills along the Rioni and Kvirila rivers. For more than three centuries this land was a kingdom of its own, with a royal court at Kutaisi and western Georgia's own catholicos at the head of its church. That long separation left a regional identity strong enough to outlast two centuries of Russian and Soviet rule. It also made Imeretians a favorite subject of Georgia's regional humor.

They speak Georgian, the largest of the Kartvelian languages. The family is small and has no proven relatives anywhere else. The Imeretian dialect has upper and lower varieties, and its neighbors are close kin: Mingrelian is spoken just to the west and Svan farther north. Both are Kartvelian, but a Georgian speaker can't understand either one. The faith is Georgian Orthodox, and you can see it in the landscape. Bagrati Cathedral stands over Kutaisi. At Gelati Monastery, which King David the Builder founded in 1106, the king lies under the entrance gate, so everyone who walks in steps over his grave.

The roots go deep. Tradition identifies Kutaisi with Aia, the Colchian city of the Golden Fleece story, and the gold dug up at nearby Vani shows that the old wealth was more than myth. Kutaisi was the capital of a united Georgia until 1122. After the country broke apart in the fifteenth century, it became the royal seat of Imereti. The kingdom spent its last centuries under Ottoman pressure and ended in 1810, when the Russian Empire annexed it. King Solomon II fled and died in exile in Trabzon five years later. In Soviet times Upper Imereti turned industrial, and the manganese mines around Chiatura were served by a network of cable cars that still defines the town.

Daily culture is easiest to find at the table. The round, cheese-filled bread that all of Georgia calls imeruli khachapuri is named for the region and made with its soft local cheese. Imeretian wine ferments in clay jars buried in the ground, called churi here instead of qvevri. It is made from white grapes such as Tsolikouri and Tsitska, with much less skin contact than the amber wines of Kakheti, so it comes out lighter and fresher. Near Chiatura, the Katskhi Pillar is a limestone column with a chapel on top, and hermit monks have lived there off and on for more than a thousand years.