churchkhela

The shape of Churchkhela looks like a candle, some people say it looks like a sausage.

The best Churchkhela is made in Kakheti region that is famous as the motherland of wine.

At the same time, some of the crop was turned over to the production of juice and churchkhela, 1.2 tons of which was produced last year.

Georgians usually make Churchkhela in Autumn when grape and nut is harvested since they are the main ingredients of Churchkhela.

"We call it churchkhela," Mr. Nanitashvili said as several guests from Moscow cautiously tasted the reddish salami, a traditional peasant snack made from walnuts and dried concentrated grape syrup.

In the western Georgian provinces of Imereti and Racha, it was sometimes called Churchkhela, a name more commonly applied to walnuts sewn onto a string, dipped in thickened white grape juice and dried.

Hazelnuts are abundantly used in Turkish especially Pontic coast of Anatolia and Georgian cuisine, traditional Georgian snack Churchkhela or sauce Satsivi are often cooked with hazelnuts (along with walnuts).

Reduced must is used in Balkan and Middle Eastern cookery, either as a syrup known as pekmez or dibis or as the basis for confections where it is thickened with flour: moustalevria, soutzoukos, churchkhela.

For Mr. Nanitashvili and thousands of other residents of the fertile Alazan Valley in Georgia who make a living making wine, the manufacture and marketing of churchkhela is a symbol of changing times in the Soviet Union.

In Kakhetia, this wine-producing region at the base of the snow-capped Caucasus mountains, the campaign has resulted in an increased emphasis on quality, and a turn toward non-alcoholic spinoff products, including grape juice and churchkhela, which was previously manufactured by farmers.