Antisa Khvichava, who lived in the remote mountain village of Sachino in Georgia, held Soviet-era documents which said she was born on July 8, 1880, but her age was contested and never proven.

The woman, who lived with her 42-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house in the mountains, retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was aged 85, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

Khvichava was said to have had 12 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren - and attributed her good health to drinking a small amount of local brandy every day.

Her 72-year-old son Mikhail was apparently born when his mother was 60.

However, experts doubted her claim, substantiated on birth documents much younger than her.

Khvichava lived through two world wars along with the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

Officials, neighbours, friends, and descendants have backed up her claim as the world's oldest living person.

Her birth certificate was lost - one of many in the past century amid revolutions and a civil war which followed the end of the USSR - but she had two Soviet-era documents which attested to her age.