ქართველთა კვებითი კულტურის ისტორიიდან: სულუგუნი

Abstract

The work deals with suluguni – a very special element of the Georgian diet. Suluguni is a specially cooked “Imeretian (West Georgian) cheese”. There are efforts made by Abkhaz and Ossetian authors to relate the provenance of suluguni to Abkhazian and Ossetian cultures. In the present work, however, it is proved that suluguni is entirely Colchian (i.e. West Georgian) product: preparing suluguni by kneading and boiling was due to excessive humidity (thereby suluguni could last for more than a year); the second reason for producing suluguni in the Colchian plain was a small number of cattle in the region with the deficit of cheese during the stoppage of lactation. Recently the Armenians also expressed their claims for suluguni and started protesting against its registration in international organizations. Their claim is based upon a simplistic argument: in Soviet times suluguni was produced not only in Georgia, but also in every other Soviet republic. In reality, however, the reason for this was the Soviet Union’s and not Georgia’s “state standard” – GOST (Russian: ГОСТ).