Pheasant's Tears Owner Opens Heart to BBC

American artist John Wurdeman, who lives with his family in the town of Signaghi, Georgia, described to the BBC how he sees Georgia and its culture, the Georgian people, art and wine; his main reasons to living in Georgia.

Once "I was looking for some CDs in a record shop, hoping to find alternative world music when I came across one of Georgian folk songs," Wurdeman said. The disc changed his life.

He trained at the Surikov Institute in Moscow, Russia and after went to Georgia in 1996 to Signaghi, the centre of the country's wine region, where he settled and started to run a winery.

He has a beautiful family, wife Ketevan and two children. He produces 40,000 bottles a year of his distinctive wines, named “Pheasants Tears” which are for sale at $25 to $45 each in nine countries, including the U.S., Canada and Hong Kong.

Georgia is a place of "very real tears but also very genuine laughter", says the impressionist painter, aged 37.

He talks about Georgian people and their traditions, how they express emotions, love and why they are more prepared to express their emotions to strangers, and finally about his interesting life in Georgia which he has dedicated to preserving Georgian wine culture.

Nino Ioseliani