The gaggle of friends descended into the rows of vines, tight queues that stretch down toward Georgia’s broad and green Alazani Valley, the country’s premier wine region. The friends, the vines, the valley, all are dwarfed by the Greater Caucasus Mountains beyond. With quick snips of shears, clusters of grapes that dangled golden and glowing in the afternoon sun mounded quickly in buckets that swung from the pickers’ arms.

“Vedrebiii!” shouted one. “Vedrebiii!” echoed another a few rows away. Loosely translated—My bucket is full! Get me another! Which more friends rushed to do, ferrying the harvest up the hill toward a crop of stone buildings. Normally, the fruit would be destined for wine, but today it was for snacking, part of a supra, a languorous feast that would sprawl across many hours, many more plates of food and so many more jugs of homemade wine I eventually lost count.

Inside one of the stone buildings that overlooked the vines, Ani Lomidze managed the supra’s setup—long folding tables pushed together, a few dozen mismatched chairs pulled around. Lomidze and her husband own the 3-year-old winery and today marked its first harvest. Hence the celebration, friends first pitching in to harvest, then indulging.

In short order, the table erupted with food. Grilled meats. Toasted flatbreads sopping with fat from cradling over and under those meats on the fire. Pickled greens. Multiple platters of salty, chewy cheeses. Bowls of kitri pomidvris, the classic Georgian salad of cucumbers and tomatoes tossed with a walnut-garlic dressing. Candied figs. And, of course, the grapes.

Supras are serious business in Georgia, often punctuated by dozens—many dozens, in fact!—of toasts. Wine is equally serious. Georgians have been making it for some 8,000 years. So I’ll be honest—the combination can make the food seem an afterthought, despite the abundance. For a dish to stand out amidst the haze of wine and oratory, it must be amazing. Lomidze’s khachapuri was and did.

But a khachapuri primer seems in order. In the U.S., we know it best as a darling of Instagram, seductive canoe-like oblongs of bread filled with molten cheese topped with a raw egg. The egg is stirred into the cheese at the table, then hunks of bread are torn from the sides and dredged through the ridiculously delicious center. Georgian fondue, if you will.

Technically, that’s Adjarian khachapuri, the version eaten in Adjara, a region in southwestern Georgia. But that’s just one of roughly 50 varieties of khachapuri found across the country. All involve bread or pastry, but not all contain cheese. Some, for example, resemble Pakistani potato-stuffed naan or Levantine meat-filled arayes.

Lomidze made penovani khachapuri, from the Samtskhe-Javakheti region in southern Georgia. What impressed me wasn’t simply the outstanding flavor—more on that in a moment—but also the ease with which it was made. I’d already seen many cooks preparing many variations of khachapuri. All of them delicious. All of them laborious yeasted breads.

Penovani khachapuri is easily the simplest of the bunch but sacrifices nothing in richness or flavor. Though they are sometimes made as hand pies, Lomidze opted to make a large feast-friendly sheet pan version. She began by rolling out a sheet of purchased puff pastry until it was roughly a 12-by-24-inch rectangle.

Over half the pastry, she sprinkled a generous amount of imeruli cheese—a chewy, salty-tangy cow’s milk cheese—and a smattering of fresh herbs. That’s it. She folded the un-cheesed half of the pastry over the filling, crimped the edges with her fingers, brushed the top with an egg wash, then popped the whole thing in the oven.

The result was tremendously comforting—rich, flaky-puffy pastry swaddling an herby-cheesy center. It was good piping hot. It was good lukewarm. It was good room temperature. The cheese alone was wonderfully complex, offering a perfectly briny contrast to the buttery pastry, the herbs bringing it all together.

The only challenge to recreate the dish back home would be the cheese. So I took one for the team and ate a fair amount of imeruli to make sure I fully grasped the flavor profile. The things I do for you! After many samples, we knew no single cheese would suffice. But a blend of Mexican queso fresco, briny feta and milky, melty mozzarella was perfect.

Finally! A khachapuri so easy, you can make it even after many (many!) jugs of Georgian wine.