A guide to Georgian cheese

Most first-time visitors arrive expecting one Georgian cheese, encountered stretched and molten inside a khachapuri, and leave having realised the country has a genuinely varied dairy tradition running well beyond that single, famous application. Understanding the difference between a handful of these regional cheeses — what each one is made from, how it is aged, and which part of the country it belongs to — turns a slice tasted at a market stall from an anonymous snack into a small, specific piece of local geography.

A cheese map shaped by isolation

Georgian cheese is easiest to understand not as a single national product but as a set of regional solutions to the same problem: how to preserve milk through a winter without refrigeration, in terrain that, until fairly recently, cut many mountain communities off from the rest of the country for months at a time. Every distinct cheese covered here traces back to that constraint in some form — a brining method here, a sheepskin ageing bag there, a heavier hand with salt somewhere else — and the differences between them are really differences between how isolated, how cold and how high up each community’s home valley happened to be. Tasting your way across a handful of these tells you almost as much about Georgian geography as a map does.

Sulguni: the cheese most visitors already know

Sulguni’s dominance is partly an accident of practicality as much as taste: it brines and travels well, holds its shape at room temperature far longer than a soft farmhouse curd would, and melts predictably enough for restaurant kitchens to rely on it across the country regardless of which region’s khachapuri they are making. That reliability is exactly why it became the default rather than a regional specialty confined to one part of the country, unlike almost every other cheese covered below.

Sulguni is the cheese most visitors encounter first and most often, since it is the standard filling in most khachapuri and the cheese sold in every supermarket and market stall in the country. It is made using a stretched-curd technique broadly similar to mozzarella — the curd is heated and pulled until it develops a layered, slightly springy texture — then brined, which gives it a firmer bite and a longer shelf life than a fresh, unbrined cheese.

Its neutral, milk-forward saltiness and reliable melt are exactly why it became the default cheese for khachapuri across most of the country: it stretches when hot without breaking down into an oily mess, and holds its shape well enough at room temperature to travel between a producer and a city market.

A smoked version, aguisili sulguni, is also made in some regions and worth trying separately if you see it, since smoking changes its character considerably. Sulguni’s stretched-curd family resemblance to mozzarella is not a coincidence of convenience — both cheeses evolved from the same basic pasta filata principle, applied independently in different parts of the world, which is worth knowing if you find yourself explaining the cheese to someone back home who has never heard the word sulguni but understands exactly what a fresh mozzarella tastes and stretches like.

Imeruli: the softer, younger cousin

Imeruli, from Imereti in western Georgia, is sulguni’s less internationally travelled but arguably more traditional relative — a younger, softer, milder cheese, closer to a fresh farmhouse curd than to sulguni’s firmer, stretched texture. It is the traditional filling for round Imeretian khachapuri, the closed, disc-shaped version found across most of the country outside Adjara, and its milder flavour and higher moisture content give that khachapuri a noticeably different eating experience from the boat-shaped Adjarian version. Every kind of khachapuri, region by region covers how these fillings map onto the different regional shapes if you want the fuller picture.

Guda: aged in a sheepskin, from the mountains of Tusheti

Guda comes from Tusheti, one of the most isolated regions in Georgia, a high mountain area near the Chechen and Dagestani borders that is cut off by snow for most of the year and reachable in summer only via one of the more dramatic mountain roads in the country.

It is a sheep’s milk cheese, and the detail that makes it genuinely distinct is how it is aged: traditionally packed and matured inside a sheepskin bag rather than a barrel, wax rind or modern cheese cave, a method shaped directly by what materials a shepherd community actually had on hand rather than any deliberate flavour decision. The result is a dense, tangy, distinctly gamey cheese unlike anything produced in the lowlands, worth seeking out specifically if a Tusheti trek is on your itinerary — see Trekking in Tusheti for what that involves.

Svanuri: heavily salted, built for a long winter

Svanuri, the cheese of Svaneti and Ushguli, takes the same preservation logic to its most extreme conclusion: a heavy, deliberate hand with salt, because Svaneti’s altitude and historic isolation — the same isolation that produced the region’s famous defensive stone towers — meant a cheese had to survive an entire winter with no realistic access to fresh supplies. The saltiness is genuinely more pronounced than sulguni or imeruli, closer in intensity to a well-aged feta or a hard pecorino than to Georgia’s milder lowland cheeses, and it is the defining ingredient in kubdari, the meat-and-cheese filled bread that functions as Svaneti’s answer to khachapuri.

Tbilisi: Authentic Georgian Cheese Tasting Experience puts several of these regional cheeses side by side in a single guided tasting, a practical way to compare them directly rather than encountering each one separately over the course of a longer trip through the regions they come from.

Tenili: the stretchy, hand-pulled cheese of Samtskhe

Tenili, from Samtskhe in the south of the country, is less widely known than sulguni or svanuri even within Georgia, and is made using a distinctive hand-pulling technique that produces long, stringy strands rather than a solid block — closer in appearance and method to a hand-pulled mozzarella or a Middle Eastern string cheese than to anything else on this list. It is worth trying specifically if your route takes you toward Vardzia or Akhaltsikhe, since it rarely travels as far as Tbilisi markets in meaningful quantity and is best encountered close to where it is actually made.

Nadughi: the fresh, whey-based option

Nadughi is closer to a fresh curd cheese or a mild ricotta than to any of the aged or brined cheeses above — soft, mild, made from whey, and eaten fresh rather than matured. It shows up as an alternative filling in some regional khachapuri, particularly Megrelian versions layered with extra cheese, and is a gentler introduction to Georgian dairy for anyone who finds sulguni’s saltiness or svanuri’s intensity too much on a first try.

How sulguni is actually made

Watching sulguni being produced, whether at a small village operation or a larger commercial dairy, makes the mozzarella comparison much more concrete. Fresh milk is curdled, then the curd is cut, drained and left to develop acidity for a period the cheesemaker judges largely by feel and taste rather than a fixed clock. Once the acidity is right, the curd is cut into strips and immersed in hot water or whey, then kneaded and stretched — pulled, folded, pulled again — until it develops the smooth, slightly layered texture that defines finished sulguni, at which point it is shaped, usually into a flattened round or block, and lowered into a brine bath to firm up and take on its characteristic saltiness.

The stretching step is the technical heart of the process: too little and the cheese stays crumbly rather than developing sulguni’s springy bite; too much and it turns tough and rubbery. Small producers do this by hand, testing the curd’s stretch with their fingers the way a mozzarella maker would, which is a large part of why sulguni quality varies so much between a mass-produced supermarket block and a fresh one bought directly from a market stall that made it that morning.

Milk source matters more than most visitors expect

Not every Georgian cheese uses cow’s milk, and the source shapes flavour as much as the ageing method does. Guda, from Tusheti, is made from sheep’s milk, giving it a heavier, more mineral, distinctly gamey character than a cow’s-milk cheese of similar age would have. Some highland producers in Svaneti and Tusheti also work with goat’s milk, particularly later in the season when sheep and cow yields drop, producing smaller batches with a sharper, more pronounced tang that rarely reaches markets outside the immediate region.

Lowland cheeses — sulguni, imeruli, nadughi — are almost always cow’s milk, reflecting the more settled, pasture-based dairy farming of Kartli, Imereti and Kakheti compared to the seasonal, herd-following pastoralism of the high mountains. Asking a market vendor which milk a particular cheese is made from is a reasonable way to work out roughly which region it came from, even before checking the label.

Buying well: village stall versus city shelf

A block of sulguni bought at a Tbilisi supermarket and one bought directly from a producer at a regional market can taste noticeably different, even under the same name, and the gap is almost always about freshness and scale rather than a fundamentally different recipe. Supermarket cheese is made for shelf stability and a long supply chain, which tends to favour a firmer, more uniform, slightly blander result.

Cheese bought at a village stall or a smaller regional market, particularly one still faintly warm or clearly made within the last day or two, tends to carry more of the specific milk’s flavour and a softer, fresher texture. Neither is wrong, but if a memorable cheese-tasting experience is the goal rather than convenience, buying close to the source — Telavi’s market for the Kakheti area, a Tusheti guesthouse for guda, a Svaneti village stall for svanuri — is worth the extra effort of getting there.

Where to taste and buy

Dezerter Bazaar in Tbilisi remains the single easiest place to compare several of these cheeses side by side, with vendors from different regions selling within a few stalls of each other and generally happy to let you taste before buying — see Dezerter Bazaar: how to shop it for how the market works and how to avoid overpaying. Beyond the capital, Telavi’s market in Kakheti carries regional produce alongside the area’s wine, and cheese bought directly from a producer in Tusheti, Svaneti or Samtskhe — whether from a village stall or a guesthouse host — is usually both fresher and more distinctly regional than anything that has already travelled to a Tbilisi shelf.

From Kutaisi: Martvili Canyon Cheese Making Experience combines a Martvili Canyon day trip with a hands-on cheese-making session, a reasonable way to see the actual production process rather than only buying the finished product at a market.

Pairing cheese with Georgian wine

Georgian qvevri wine and Georgian cheese developed alongside each other for centuries, and the pairing logic follows from that shared history rather than any imported wine-and-cheese convention. Salty, dense cheeses like svanuri and guda hold up well against the tannic grip of a qvevri-aged Saperavi, since the wine’s structure needs something substantial on the other side of the plate to balance it; milder sulguni and imeruli sit comfortably with either a red or an amber qvevri wine, both of which tend to carry enough minerality and texture to complement a salty cheese without either side dominating.

Qvevri wine explained: 8,000 years in a clay pot covers the production method behind these wines in full, and Natural wine bars in Tbilisi is a reasonable place to try several pairings in one evening if this interests you beyond a single meal.

Taking cheese home

Hard and semi-hard cheeses like sulguni and svanuri generally travel reasonably well in checked luggage, wrapped tightly to contain the smell, and hold up better over a long journey than a soft or fresh cheese like nadughi would. Rules on bringing dairy across borders vary considerably by destination, and travellers heading into the EU or other jurisdictions with strict personal-import limits on animal products should check current rules before assuming any amount of cheese can simply come home with them.

Customs, duty free and what you may take out covers the Georgian side of this, and it is worth pairing that check with your own country’s import rules before you commit to carrying a kilo of svanuri through several connecting flights.

Cheese beyond khachapuri

It is easy to think of Georgian cheese purely as a khachapuri filling, but it turns up across the rest of the table just as often. A plain plate of sulguni or imeruli, sliced and served alongside fresh herbs and bread, is a standard opening course at a supra, set out before the hot dishes arrive and eaten steadily through the meal rather than as a single course.

Cheese also appears at breakfast, usually alongside matsoni yoghurt and bread rather than as a cooked dish, and in mchadi, the cornbread, which is often served with a slab of cheese pressed inside or alongside it while still warm from the griddle. Treating cheese only as an ingredient in one famous dish undersells how constantly it actually appears through an ordinary day of Georgian eating, from the first course of a feast to a quick market-bought lunch on a hiking day.

Cheese as a lens on the whole country

Working through Georgia’s regional cheeses in order — sulguni’s ubiquity, imeruli’s softness, guda’s sheepskin ageing, svanuri’s heavy salt, tenili’s hand-pulled strands — ends up tracing a rough map of the country’s geography and history at the same time: lowland versus highland, accessible versus isolated, centuries of trade versus centuries of snow-bound self-sufficiency.

Few single foods carry that much regional information, which is part of why cheese is worth treating as more than a khachapuri ingredient on a food-focused trip through Georgia. Is a Tbilisi food tour worth it? is a reasonable place to start if you want a guided introduction to several of these cheeses before deciding which regions are worth chasing the rest down in person.

A note on quantity versus quality

Georgian cheese production spans a genuine range from small, single-family operations selling a handful of wheels a week at a village stall to larger commercial dairies supplying supermarket chains across the country. Both are legitimately Georgian cheese, but they are not the same product, and the flavour difference between a mass-produced supermarket sulguni and one made that morning by a single household is often larger than the difference between two entirely different named varieties bought at the same scale.

This is worth remembering when comparing prices: a noticeably cheaper block of cheese at a city shop is not necessarily a bargain version of the same thing sold at a regional market, and a higher price at a small producer’s stall often reflects a genuinely different, more labour-intensive process rather than a tourist markup.

Frequently asked questions about Georgian cheese

The FAQ block above covers what sulguni actually is, how it differs from imeruli, what guda cheese is and why it is aged in sheepskin, why Svan cheese is so salty, whether you can bring Georgian cheese home on a flight, where to try several varieties in one place, and what wine pairs best with Georgian cheese.

What is sulguni cheese?

Sulguni is a semi-hard, brined cheese made using a stretched-curd technique similar to mozzarella, giving it a slightly springy, layered texture. It is the standard filling in most khachapuri and one of the few Georgian cheeses sold widely outside the country.

What is the difference between sulguni and imeruli cheese?

Imeruli is younger, softer and milder, closer to a fresh farmhouse cheese, and is the traditional filling for round Imeretian khachapuri. Sulguni is firmer and has gone through the additional stretching step, giving it a different texture and a longer shelf life, which is why it travels and melts differently in cooking.

What is guda cheese?

Guda is a sheep’s milk cheese from Tusheti, in the high mountains near the Chechen and Dagestani borders, traditionally aged inside a sheepskin bag rather than a barrel or a modern cheese cave — a preservation method shaped directly by the region’s isolation and lack of refrigeration.

Why is Svan cheese so salty?

Svanuri, the cheese of Svaneti, is heavily salted as a preservation method developed for a region historically cut off by snow for much of the year, where a cheese that could sit unrefrigerated through a long winter mattered more than a mild, everyday flavour.

Can I bring Georgian cheese home on a flight?

Hard and semi-hard cheeses like sulguni and svanuri generally travel and pack reasonably well, though rules vary by destination country, particularly within the EU, where personal imports of dairy from outside the bloc are restricted. Check your destination’s specific customs rules before assuming any cheese can come home in your luggage.

Where can I try several Georgian cheeses in one place?

Dezerter Bazaar in Tbilisi has a dedicated cheese section with vendors from multiple regions selling side by side, making it the easiest single place to compare sulguni, imeruli and other varieties in one visit without travelling to each cheese’s home region.

What wine pairs well with Georgian cheese?

Salty, dense cheeses like svanuri and guda pair well with the tannic structure of qvevri-aged reds such as Saperavi, while milder sulguni and imeruli work comfortably with either red or white qvevri wines, which tend to have enough grip and minerality to stand up to a salty cheese without either side overwhelming the other.