Kachreti
Kakheti Georgia
Kachreti, Kakheti ,Georgia
Shops, Hotels, Guesthouses, Wine Cellars, Services
Kachreti town website
Kachreti is one of the most well-known towns in the Kakheti wine grape growing regions of Georgia. Kachreti is 1 hour 15 minutes from Tbilisi airport (74 km). Kachreti is a town in Kakheti region of Georgia, famous for its wine, wine cellars and natural countryside.
Over recent years Kachreti has been thought of by many as a hotel. Kachreti is far more than any hotel. It is a thriving town with many shops, supermarkets and around 4000 residents and covers several villages in the area as well as a wine factory and guest houses.
Much of this is down to the hardiness of the Georgian people who live here in the town. They have struggled through bad times and pulled themselves up to restore what was left to them after the death of the USSR.
Family traditions have continued, but more than this, the younger generations have developed their own businesses to support the town. Greengrocery, clothing shops, food and general stores have appeared or old businesses have been redeveloped.
The main purpose of this website is to present all or as many of the various busunesses and their services which are available in Kachreti.
Since Soviet times, many of the towns and villages in Georgia have become independant. They provided their own services and produced their own consumables, tools and everyday items.
The fall of the USSR in the mid 90s left Kachreti with little outside support financially and it has taken many years to recover.
As little as 5 years ago, Kachreti had only a very few employers, including a hotel, a couple of cafe/restaurants, and a couple of petrol stations.
Many buildings in Kachreti had been abandoned, such as he old police station next to the fire station. This has been restored to a guest house. The old community centre had also been abandoned but has given rise to a boxing club and a dancing school. Whilst these occupy only a small part of the former large building, they were not there only a couple of years ago, showing the renewed vigour of the townspeople.
The fall and rise of the phoenix
In older times Kachreti was a village which grew into a town. It was one of those small villages in the area which were gifted by the king to a nobleman. Kachreti continued simply as a village for many years but eventually farming bagan in a much larger way. Local people were hired to do the work as is usual, but many of them became itinerant workers hiring themselves out to different landowners at different times of the year.
When the USSR fell in the 1990s, a big problem reared its head. The Russian government closed the banks and cleared out all of the finances of the working people. Those who had worked for a lifetime lost everything.
The community suffered as a whole. Businesses closed, community property lay unused, the only factory in Kachreti closed its doors with many workers losing their only income, and the building has lain empty and decaying ever since.
The Kachreti school, a large building opposite the fire and police stations closed down and was replaced by separate buildings for different age groups. The remains of other buildings can be seen around the town, but these are slowly either being rebuilt and repurposed , or demolished and replaced by new businesses.
Kachreti recently earned a new ambulance station. The ambulance service had previously operated from a private house which was not in the best of condition behind the fire station, then moved to a second house whilst waiting for their new purpose built premises to be built and commissioned. That is now in service since late 2022.
The police station had also moved from its old building to a shiny new office alongside the main road on the outskirts of the town away from the town centre.
For now, the fire station occupies its old building which is becoming too small for the modern machines which sadly have to live in the open beside the station.
Kachreti Blog
