Georgia (country) Money and Shopping

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• Gold & Other Jewelry - Gold, silver, handmade & other misc. jewelry, precious stones are very cheap in Georgia and quality of the precious stones, gold and silver is superb. Many foreigners visit Georgia to buy jewelry, because of its cost and quality.
• Art & Paintings – Georgian artists, such as Pirosmani, Gigo Gabashvili, David Kakabadze, Lado Gudiashvili, Korneli Sanadze, Elene Akhvlediani, Sergo Kobuladze, Simon Virsaladze, Ekaterine Baghdavadze and others, are famous for their work. In Georgia you will find many various art shops, paintings and painters who sell their works on the streets. Their work is high quality and are often very good values.
• Antiques & Other Misc. Gifts – in Georgia you will able to find many antiques not only from Georgia, but Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Russian and European as well.
• Georgian wine, as much as you can. Georgia is the cradle of wine making, and with 521 original varieties of grape you will be sure to find excellent wines.
• Cognac. Georgian cognac is unique as it's made from Georgian wine. Try Saradjishvili 'Tbilisi' cognac.
• When heading outside the cities, you might find an original hand-made carpet for sale.
• Georgians love to drink, so the country has an seemingly infinite amount of beers, wines, liquors and distilled drinks. To take home, buy a bottle of chacha, a potent grape vodka somewhat similar to Lebanese Arak.

Georgian export commodities (especially wine and mineral water) are widely counterfeited in the domestic and CIS market. For example, the Borjomi bottling plant produces roughly one million bottles of Borjomi per year, but there were three million bottles sold in Russia only! To be sure that you are getting the real thing, you will need to buy from the source.

Recent update (Dec 2007): government together with business circles has initiated a wide-scale fight with counterfeit wine and mineral water so the percentage of counterfeit products have almost been eliminated. However when stocking with bottled wine it is best to buy it at large supermarkets which have better control of their procurement compared to smaller stores. Such supermarkets are Goodwill, Big Ben or Populi. Same applies to mineral water.