Written from Georgia (the country) in the winter of 2019 / spring 2020.
In the thick August heat, a crowd gathers around the Borjomi water spring. Shaded from the brilliant sky by a green pavilion, we form a lazy line for a taste of the magical hangover cure, the elixir of the bygone Russian nobility. A woman stands a meter below ground, filling bottles and plastic cups from a tap that never stops flowing. Even before I take a sip, I can feel the gentle explosion of bubbles on the water’s surface and inhale the scent of freshly peeled eggs. It’s tepid and hardly refreshing on that day, but no one is grimacing, not even the children. This is the famed water of Georgia, national treasure and beloved drink throughout the former Soviet Union. It is also a barometer of Georgia’s turbulent relationship with Russia.
The Borjomi mineral water park runs through a narrow gorge in a lush rolling region of central Georgia where the country morphs between its dry eastern plateau, subtropical Black Sea coast and towering Caucasus Mountains to the north and south. It is the main tourist attraction in the small eponymous town. Tall iron gates guard the park’s entrance, their bars looping and swirling as though beckoning to a fairy tale. The area around the tasting spring—named Ekaterine in 1841 for the daughter of a Russian viceroy after she experienced a miraculous cure—is cluttered with children’s rides. I weave my way through lines for choo-choo trains, swinging pirate ships and a kiddie Boeing 747 flight simulator. Housewives and small-time carnies sell popcorn, palm-sized lollipops and swirled soft serve. On that summer’s day, the park is chock-a-block with Arab and Caucasian tourists touting toddlers and pushing prams, the valley’s newest elite visitors. Loosening from the crowds, the park extends two kilometers along a forested trail to natural thermal baths where children splash and dive into warm pools and old ladies medicate tired aches.
Borjomi is not only a place, but arguably Georgia’s most famous brand. Discovered over a thousand years ago, the springs—now 57 explored by the company IDS Borjomi—were later abandoned until Russian soldiers stumbled upon them in the 1820s. They soon became renowned for their healing properties, and the Borjomi gorge grew into a popular resort destination for the Russian nobility. In the 1890s, a bottling plant was built and soon millions of small glass bottles were being pulled out in rail cars each year for consumption throughout the Russian Empire. During the Soviet era, Borjomi became a household name synonymous with health. Russian food writer Anna Kharzeeva describes a popular saying during her grandmother’s time: “It’s too late to drink Borjomi when your kidneys have failed”.
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Under the ground, Georgia is bubbling. Hundreds of natural thermal springs have been discovered across the country, the combination of minerals, gasses and buried lava generating the perfect cocktail. A reserve of 90,000 cubic meters a day of thermal flow is coursing in the deep veins of the mountains; used for spas, drinking, and, where it runs below cities, for household heating systems.
Once a coveted destination for health spas, most Soviet-era sanatoriums are now abandoned, forming crumbling palaces for stray dogs. Others were converted into homes for Georgians displaced during conflicts at the time of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The bottled water industry, although also suffering with the fall of the Iron Curtain, was quick to revive in its rubble. IDS Borjomi’s story tells of stamping out corruption and fakes and modernizing production, the company’s journey mirroring Georgia’s own rocky path towards independence and modernity. Along with Borjomi, at least six other mineral water labels hail from Georgia, each with its own taste of salt and earth. Today mineral water is one of the small country’s largest exports, just behind its other liquid treasure: wine.
The fortunes of Georgian water are woven into its messy and often contradictory relationship with Russia. After nearly two centuries under Russian rule—first within the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, with just a short interlude of independence in between—Georgia has struggled to emerge from Moscow’s shadow. An ancient crossroads between East and West, its contemporary politics are a tug of war between old allegiances and the West. Russia remains the largest export market for Georgian goods, its greatest source of tourists and migrants and is partner to a crisscrossing cultural history that binds the people of both nations together. Yet, it is also a bitter foe.
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On a steep cobbled street soldiering up the urban side of Mtatsminda Hill in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, a red and white flag hangs from an apartment window. It’s a map of Georgia with chunks cut out for two separatist regions—Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “20% is occupied by Russia,” proclaims the map in English to the forgetful Western eye. The same flag waves outside the parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue where protests against the ruling Georgian Dream party, and its perceived coziness with Russia, ebb and flow like a tide but never cease.
In 2008, mounting hostilities with Russia tipped into all-out war. In just five days, at least 800 people including soldiers and civilians on both sides had lost their lives and nearly 200,000 had been displaced from their homes. The war led to the severing of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the official recognition by Russia of the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Georgia considers its own. Russia has since occupied these territories in violation of the ceasefire agreement and continues to wage a “creeping war” as it inches the borders farther into Georgia.
Despite outward hostilities, many Georgians fear Russia still pulls strings in their internal politics. In the summer of 2019, tens of thousands marched through the streets of Tbilisi after a Russian politician was invited to give an address from the Georgian parliament speaker’s seat. Young people wore red eye patches with “20%” written in white paint in honor of two people who lost their eyes due to police repression of the rallies. Others raised signs drawn in bold red and white: “Occupeyed: You can take our eyes but we still see the truth”. In retaliation for the outcry, Russian President Putin suspended flights to Georgia to “protect Russian citizens”, simultaneously gouging at the heart of Georgia’s economy.
In November that year as temperatures dipped below freezing, protestors staged overnight blockades of parliament after the government failed to carry out promised electoral reforms. The debate was framed in the familiar battleground between Russian-style politics and the democratic West. Men and women waved EU flags and held up homemade banners reading “End Putin’s Dream” and “Ivanishvili is a Liar”, in reference to oligarch head of the Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his colossal wealth in Russia and was a citizen of the country until 2011. By the spring there had been progress towards reaching a compromise ahead of the country’s October 2020 elections, but implementation has been stalled by an unforeseen obstacle: the novel coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Georgia has expanded its political and economic ties with the West. On the corner of Tbilisi’s central Liberty Square an EU and NATO information center is decked with large flags of dark blues, yellows and whites—the dreams of Georgia. In 2014, Georgia signed an Association Agreement with the EU, entailing deep economic integration, democratic alignment and visa liberalization. Tourism to Georgia has rocketed in part following reforms and restoration projects to draw Western visitors, and underground techno clubs and hipster bars delight in constructing Tbilisi’s reputation as a disciple of Berlin.
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Over the years, Georgia’s battle with Russia has bled into economics, with water serving as a soldier on the frontlines.
In 2007, IDS Borjomi filed a suit over copyright infringement in the Moscow Arbitration Court. The offending Russian company had been selling water in sleek glass bottles, a painting of a pavilion amid forest green hills under the label “Borzhom”—the Tsarist-era rendering of Borjomi. It wasn’t the only company that had been marketing uncannily similar-looking drinks. “The fact that the Borjomi people think there is a certain similarity, that is their personal business, let them think that,” the director of another company selling “Borjomi-like water” was quoted by Reuters.
The glass clones had stepped into a void created the year before when Russia banned imports of Georgian water, citing unreliable health and safety and, ironically, the influx of fakes in the market. But no one in Georgia was buying this version of the story. “It’s absolutely obvious that Russia is fighting against anything Georgian today,” Georgia’s agricultural minister said of the ban. “Borjomi is one of the best mineral waters in the world.”
It wasn’t until 2013, neatly coinciding with the exit of Georgia’s pro-European leader Mikheil Saakashvili and the entrance of conciliatory billionaire Ivanishvili, that Georgian water was allowed to cross the border again. That same year, a Russian company also acquired the largest share in IDS Borjomi.
The seven-year water embargo which also included Georgian wines and other agricultural products shook Georgia’s economy, but could not quell the expansion of the water industry. In fact, the ban forced mineral water companies to seek out new markets, accelerating economic independence much the way the country’s politics had expanded from under the wing of Russia. Before the ban, nearly 70 per cent of water exported from Georgia went to its northern neighbor, now it is just under half. Borjomi, which had previously sent more than 50 per cent of its entire production to Russia, was exporting to 40 countries by the end of the embargo and had become the top-selling water brand throughout most post-Soviet and Baltic Sea countries. Exports of Borjomi and other mineral waters also grew to Gulf states, Israel, Europe and the United States.
In some ways, the Russian embargo only made Georgian companies stronger.
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In Borjomi town, water’s story is visible like the ribs of a shell. Crammed in a narrow, turreted house, the Borjomi Museum of Local Lore charts the history of the region, its plethora of artifacts extending from a massive 14 million-year-old round of petrified wood shining like polished gemstone, to bronze arrowheads and amulets and wall-sized paintings from World War II. Antlers poke from the sides of mirrors and lamps, and my guide switches lights on and off as we come and go from each room. The topmost floor is a mausoleum of stuffed bears, lynx, deer, boars, eagles, falcons, butterflies and tiny birds—the spoils of countless royal hunting trips.
The museum’s second floor is devoted to Georgia’s period under Russian control. The period when water made Borjomi a global town. The Romanov family, later of Anastasia fame, established Borjomi as their summer residence, building two palaces on sloping meadows. One burnt down in 1968, the events steeped in rumors of arson and burglary. Cabinets of porcelain vases and dishes recovered from the fire line the walls of the room. My guide lists off the names of famous trademarks from Germany, Russia, England, China, Japan and France, gifts from dignitaries visiting the Pearl of the Caucasus.
In the next room, the walls are decorated with accolades of Borjomi’s prowess in European competitions. One of women lounging amid flowers and deer is for a second-place finish after Vichy, Borjomi’s main rival. Next to it, a large naked Hercules hoists a world of goddesses on his shoulders as he stands in the rapids of the Borjomula River. Faded pictures show men soaking in bathtubs of Borjomi and surrendering to the discomfort of tubes and machines manned by white-coated doctors. Green and brown bottles stand below a display of the first Borjomi bottle labels. All are in Russian, not the curving script of Georgia. It was the Russians that put Borjomi on that map. The Russians that propelled its development to the most sophisticated in the region, constructing the first hydroelectric facilities and forcing railways through narrow river tributaries. And it was the fall of the Soviet Union that caused the town’s economy to flounder.
None of Borjomi’s original sanatoriums are still in use, although several spa hotels still offer some of the wacky treatments like intestinal lavage and vaginal wash. On the outskirts of town, a sanatorium-turned home for internally displaced looms high over the sun-drenched riverbed, blackened by the smoke of small chimneys. When I visit, two men are lighting up cigarettes, leaning over a dilapidated balcony. At the base of the building is a giant cube mosaic displaying the ambitions and achievements of the Soviets in vivid color: farmers harvesting fruits, builders, a rocket.
Today, bottled water and tourism are the mainstays of the Borjomi region’s economy. A new kind of tourism is being promoted for Western visitors like me and less thrifty ones from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Gulf. Guest houses and homestays have sprung up like saplings. Already in 2015, there were more than 300 in the municipality which is home to a tiny resident population of 21,000. As in all of Georgia, tourism has boomed, reaching record levels in 2019. Even Russians have continued to come, growing in number despite Putin’s flight ban.
During my August visit, I choose a homestay that proves hard to find, tucked behind backyard alleyways and across a swaying footbridge. But once there it is peaceful, and when the day closes the sun falls orange above the river. The other two rooms are occupied by Germans and an older Russian couple.
On the first evening, our hostess has laid out a feast in her front yard and we sit beneath an arbor heavy with swollen grapes.
The Russians’ flight was cancelled because of the ban, but they re-routed through another country and came anyway.
“We love coming to Georgia,” they tell us, as we alternate between glasses of homemade wine and Georgia’s grappa-like chacha. It’s calmer here, they say, just more relaxed.
Our hostess raises a glass, “Fuck politics!” she exclaims. And we join her laughing as shadows play checkers across the lawn.
Her remark reflects a common refrain in Georgia that attempts to separate people from politics. There are too many ties that bind Russians and Georgians together, even in their shared love of Borjomi, the water and the place.
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I go back to Borjomi in December. The train from Tbilisi bends with the emerald Mktvari River and a thick frost covers the ground feigning snow. The colors are muted, nature clad in the pale outfits of winter. What would be a two-hour trip by road is four by train, progress slowing to a crawl for the final 30 kilometers through the hills. At the park, there are no rides, no children and no woman filling bottles from the tap. So I fill my own cup from the stream of water that never stops. Again, it is warm—more welcome now in the cold—and sulfurous. The path to the thermal baths snakes along a brook rippling under ice circles formed around cold rocks. Bare trees cast shadows that lengthen early. At the baths, young men are gingerly stripping to their boxers and running to the steaming water. Winter may come and go, but under the frozen ground Georgia is bubbling.
tararachael 