Savor Georgian Dumplings and Wine at a Suburban Chicago Hideaway

Chicago is home to a robust and diverse wine scene, yet the city is somehow behind the curve when it comes to glasses and bottles from Georgia, a nation at the crossroads of Asia and Europe that’s home to an 8,000-year-old winemaking tradition. If Tamta Sanodze, founder of Georgian restaurant Stumara in suburban Wheeling gets her way, that’s all about to change.

“[Georgia] is the birthplace of winemaking,” says Sanodze, a native Georgian who immigrated with her husband three years ago to the U.S. from the country’s capital city, Tbilisi. Georgian wines are fermented for months in a qvevri, a huge earthenware vessel buried deep underground. “We have a rare and special technology to make these wines, [so] the tannins and flavors are very special.”

Georgian wines aren’t novel anymore in places like Washington D.C. and New York, but have only recently begun to grab a foothold in a smattering of Chicago restaurants including Lakeview’s Chicago Diplomat Cafe and Mediterranean spot Oda in Andersonville.

Sanodze, who opened Stumara in April at 847 W. Dundee Road next door to her Georgian deli bakery Pirosmani, aims to bring an even higher local profile to Georgian viticulture with educational wine dinners, a menu of traditional dishes that pair well with the wines, and with an eventual second location in Downtown Chicago. “At Stumara, our guests are already asking for a location downtown where we can [share] a little bit more about our country, our history, our dishes, and wines.”

Stumara may also introduce Chicagoans to traditional staples like khinkali (massive, meaty Georgian soup dumplings), adjaruli khachapuri (bread boats stuffed with cheese and egg), and megruli kharcho — a savory beef cheek stew with rich spiced walnut sauce. Georgian cuisine has a well-earned reputation for meat-heavy dishes, but Sanodze also attends to vegetarians and vegans with options like nigvziani badrijani — fried eggplant stuffed with spicy garlic and walnut paste.

Tucked inside a suburban strip mall, Stumara seats around 50 in a space carefully designed to aid in Sanodze’s larger project — spreading the good word about Georgian history and culture. Its revered textile industry, for example, is represented in eye-catching pillows and upholstered furniture, and text from The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, the national epic poem of Georgia by medieval luminary Shota Rustaveli, decorates the walls in both Georgian and English.

“It’s a story about love and friendship,” Sanodze says of the poem, which scholars describe as a call to live each day with joy, courage, and perseverance. “It’s about the special moments and what’s important in life.”

Stumara, 847 W. Dundee Road in Wheeling.