A Country With a Great History and Even Greater Potential

Georgia is probably a place you don’t know much about,” said the late Anthony Bourdain when his “Parts Unknown” TV program filmed an episode about the country several years ago. “Few Americans, I suspect, could place it on a map. It’s small compared to the superpowers around it, but vital, its significance far exceeding its relative size.”

My conversations with an array of global investors and experts confirm that vitality and significance. More and more companies today know where to find it on a map.

But first, let’s get one thing straight: The country was first inhabited by the proto-Georgian tribes in the 12th century BC, giving Georgia a more than 3,000-year head start on the U.S. state of Georgia — a distinction Georgians find themselves constantly having to explain. Need further ways to distinguish the two? It helps to see the phonetic spelling and Georgian script for the country’s name: It sounds like “Sakartvelo,” and it looks like this: . Georgia is also known to be the oldest wine making region in the world, going back more than 8,000 years and giving Georgia another title as the “Cradle of Wine.”

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