Ia Tabagari

Ask anyone in Georgian tourism where it began, and Ia Tabagari’s name tends to arrive before the sentence is finished.

An ethnologist by training, Ia mapped the country’s wine roads before there were signs to follow — then helped put the signs up. She co-founded Living Roots in 2012 to send travellers past the monuments and into the kitchens, cellars and workshops where Georgia actually lives: to the families, winemakers and makers who are, as she sees it, the country’s real wealth.

“She revolutionised food and wine tourism in the country… and has repeatedly been asked to be Minister for Tourism, turning it down on every occasion.”

Wired for Adventure, 2024

Draft / confirm  She headed the board of the Georgian Incoming Tour Operators Association for ten years and still serves on it, mentors women building tourism businesses across the regions, and sits among the voices shaping the country’s sustainable-tourism strategy. Where others saw an empty village near Sighnaghi, she saw a horse-riding culture worth saving — and rebuilt it, at what became Lost Ridge.

[Photo to confirm] — Lost Ridge, where Ia brought Georgia’s horse culture back to an emptying village.

Draft  A closing, human paragraph: what it’s like to travel with someone who knows which door to knock on, and why she still answers her own phone. Keep it warm, specific, unshowy.