The Georgian supra: a guide to the feast and its toasts

Sooner or later, Georgia will sit you down at a supra, and it will probably be the evening you talk about for years. A supra is the Georgian feast — a long table of shared plates, poured wine and spoken toasts that stands in for both dinner and ceremony. It looks like a big meal and works like something closer to theatre, and knowing how it runs before you arrive is the difference between watching it happen and being part of it.

This is our guide to the table: who leads it, how the toasts move, what fills the plates, and why the whole thing matters more to Georgians than almost anything else they will show you.

The tamada, and why one person leads

Every supra has a tamada — a toastmaster, chosen for the evening, who carries the table through a run of toasts from start to finish. The tamada is not simply the person who says “cheers” first; the role is closer to a conductor. They set the order, decide when the table drinks and when it listens, and give each toast enough weight that a room of talkers falls quiet to hear it. A good tamada is witty, generous and a little philosophical, and being asked to be one is a real honour.

You do not raise your own glass whenever you like. You drink to the toast the tamada has just given, together, and between toasts you eat, talk and top up. That single rule is most of supra etiquette, and once you have it, the evening carries you.

How the toasts run

The toasts follow a rough order that a Georgian table knows by heart, even if no two evenings are identical. The first is usually to peace, or to the reason everyone has gathered. Then, in some order, come toasts to Georgia, to those at the table, to parents, to children, to love, to friendship, and — the one that catches visitors off guard with its tenderness — to those who could not be there, and to the memory of those who have died, drunk in near silence.

Guests are toasted warmly and early, so be ready to be thanked for coming further than you can quite explain. You are welcome to give a toast yourself when the tamada opens the floor; a short, sincere one to your hosts, to Georgia, or to the friendship of the table is always the right note. On our trips we translate the toasts as they go, so what is being said lands rather than passes you by.

What fills the table

A supra is built to overwhelm the table on purpose — plates are laid on top of plates, and an empty surface is treated as a failure of hospitality. You will meet the country’s greatest hits and a good deal besides: khachapuri, the cheese bread in its regional shapes; khinkali, the pleated soup dumplings eaten by hand; pkhali, the little walnut-and-herb pâtés under pomegranate seeds; badrijani, aubergine rolled around walnut paste; lobio beans in a clay pot; grilled meats and mtsvadi skewers; and bread, always bread, torn and shared.

The wine is Georgian and usually local to wherever you are sitting — often Qvevri wine, made the old way in clay vessels buried to the neck, an amber white or a dark saperavi poured from a jug rather than a labelled bottle. Toasts are drunk in wine, not spirits; the chacha, Georgia’s grape brandy, tends to appear later and optionally. Nobody counts your glasses, and a teetotal guest toasting in lemonade or water is entirely normal — the point is that you raise something and mean it.

The singing

If the evening is a real one, at some point the table will sing. Georgian polyphonic singing — several independent voices braided together, with no instruments — is on the UNESCO list of the world’s living heritage, and hearing it break out over a supper table, unplanned, is the moment most guests say they understood the country. You are not expected to join, only to stop talking and listen, though by the end of a good supra you may find you are humming along anyway.

How to be a good guest

There is very little to get wrong. Arrive hungry and pace yourself, because the food keeps coming and the toasts have not even started. Drink to the toast, not ahead of it. Say yes to more than you think you can eat, then leave a little rather than clearing every plate, which signals you have been well fed. And when the floor opens, offer a short toast of your own — the effort matters far more than the polish.

If you would like to learn the table from the inside — pleating khinkali, pulling khachapuri from the oven, and sitting down to a proper supra with the toasts explained as they come — that is exactly what our masterclasses, tastings and the supra trip is built around.

When you are ready to plan an evening like this into a real trip, tell us your dates and who is travelling. It is usually Nia who replies, within 24 hours.