My flight to Yerevan, Armenia, like most flights to the Caucasus, left Vienna in the early hours. The night was cloudless, and too excited by my first visit to the region to sleep, I followed our journey, cross-referencing between the plane’s flight-path display and the lights below. At one point, we were only a few hundred kilometers south of Odessa, the Ukrainian port city that had recently been bombed by Russia.
Samsun, Türkiye’s most important Black Sea port, was a burst of lights almost directly below me, and then came the once-legendary Byzantine port of Trabzon. We veered southeast, crossing eastern Türkiye, a vast swath of which had been Western Armenia until, in and after 1915, more than a million Armenians had been murdered during the Armenian Genocide.
The next big burst of lights was Yerevan, where we landed just before 4am. Soon I was in a prebooked taxi making my way downtown. English was no help to me, as my driver spoke none. Armenian—a distant cousin of Greek, occupying its own branch of the Indo-European language family—offered no way in for him. The Armenian alphabet comprises 39 letters, 36 invented in 405 ce by theologian Mesrop Mashtot, the other three introduced later. I had tried to learn a few, but they seemed more like discrete runic portents than the prosaic building blocks of words, so I postponed the endeavor. One thing I could decipher were the massive billboards advertising wines by a producer called Hin Areni.
I was relieved that the country was so readily announcing its wine production. I had proposed a wine travel article knowing only that Armenia had an abundant wine culture and that it was crossed by the Transcaucasian Trail, part of which I would be hiking the following week. I was delighted when, in the lift up to my hotel room, there were tantalizing suggestions of various flights of Armenian wines in the restaurant where I would soon be having breakfast.
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I had chosen the Tufenkian Hotel because it was Armenian-owned, in this case by a member of Armenia’s diaspora who was also a carpet collector and manufacturer. Estimated to include some 10 million people, Armenia’s diaspora is more than three times the population of Armenia itself. The hotel complex included a large hall in which several looms displayed carpets at various stages of completion—it was a Sunday and their weavers would be back the next day. A great friend in the carpet business had once told me, “Understand carpets, and you understand world history.” This had bemused me at the time, but reading the display information I learned that carpet trading had been central to trading among and beyond the Caucasus countries: Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. One can apparently still visit the Orbelian Caravanserai, which had been a rest stop for the medieval Silk Road trade between East Asia and the Mediterranean.
After breakfast, I set off into Yerevan to orient myself and to try to catch sight of Mount Ararat, which can be seen on a clear day. The Vernissage market, celebrated for the range and quality of its traditional crafts, was directly across from the hotel, so I started there. Most stalls are staffed by relaxed Armenian couples in their 50s and 60s, and at no point was I pressured to buy anything or even to approach a stall. In all my travels, this was a first. I was particularly drawn to a stall specializing in functional walnut-wood artifacts, stunning cheese boards in unusual shapes and long-handled ladles the length of a tennis racket. Despite having no musical ability, I often gravitate toward musical instruments and found myself at a stall specializing in the duduk, the Armenian double-reeded woodwind instrument, carved from apricot wood, whose music has been recognized by UNESCO as being a masterpiece of intangible heritage. It had apparently been the only instrument capable of bringing the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian to tears.
The market had been reasonably attended, and so I was surprised, as I began to explore the city, that there seemed to be hardly anyone about. It was a hot early September morning, and I was reminded of Italian cities in mid-August, when it seems the whole population has decamped to the seaside. But Armenia is landlocked, and its average per capita monthly income of around US$215 makes leisure traveling difficult for many. I wondered where everybody was as I walked through Republic Square, a stately neoclassical space in which many of the pinkish buildings are made from local tuff. I joked to myself that I was experiencing a grape’s-eye view of Yerevan: bearing the brunt of the country’s continental climate and walking within the stark dryness of its volcanic legacy.
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Yerevan is a soothing, ordered city to navigate—many thoroughfares are labeled with their Western alphabet equivalent—and I was amazed that cars all dutifully stopped at traffic lights, even though there weren’t many pedestrians for whom to stop. No chance of getting crushed, then, offered up my grape avatar, at which point, finding myself in front of the History Museum of Armenia, I thought it best to escape the heat and solipsistic musings.
All museums are interesting, and some are epic. This was the latter, the kind of place one could spend a week. There happened to be an exhibition of 19th-century carpets in the collection of James Tufenkian, my hotelier, and the sheer variety of colors and shapes was mesmerizing. I would never again take a carpet for granted. Also moving was a near-intact leather shoe, complete with laces, dated to around 3,500 bce. I had been dazzled by a cache of Roman shoes at Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall, and was astounded that the Armenian shoe was almost three times as old.
When I emerged, the afternoon temperature was hovering around 97°F (36°C). I mapped a walking route that I hoped would take me to a viewing point for Mount Ararat, meandering through the quiet city until I realized this view would probably involve a sweltering climb. I had passed many appealing cafés with empty tables, but at the point at which the heat got the better of me, I found myself in front of a trendy coffee shop. It was occupied by several extremely hip people in their 20s and 30s in deep communion with their laptops. As I considered ordering a drink, the options seemed to be a traditional tea made from some form of wild grass, or anything from the international repertoire of coffee and coffee-based drinks whose provenance was once Italy.
I was served by a fascinating, lithesome creature whose mother might have been a tall blond Slav and whose father might have been an alien from a planet sympathetic to Earth, as imagined by George Lucas. At least six feet (1.8m) tall, he had angular cheekbones, deep-set deep-blue eyes, and pale skin that could never have seen the harsh sunlight outside. I don’t speak Armenian, I told him, ashamed that I could barely say hello yet. It turned out Yuri didn’t either, though his English was good. He told me he was from Siberia and, like some 100,000 of his countrymen, had fled to Yerevan after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many to avoid being drafted. This influx had put considerable pressure on Yerevan’s population of just over one million people and had driven rents up even higher. Until Armenia’s independence in 1991, it had been part of the Soviet Union, and many Armenians still spoke Russian. Most Russians in Yerevan didn’t feel the need to learn Armenian, and unsure of how long they might be staying, many worked remotely in IT jobs and kept to themselves.
After the refreshing cup of pale amber ivan chai, or firewood tea, I decided to make my way to Lavash Restaurant, a farm-to-table establishment that had opened in 2017 as a celebration of Armenian cuisine. It was now about 6pm, and a few more people seemed to be out on the street. Lavash is the thin flatbread that has been a staple in the Caucasus, Iran, and Türkiye for centuries. Most often leavened, the dough is stretched and pummeled into a disk and then placed on a special pillow and slapped onto the inside walls of a tonir, a clay or stone oven related to the tandoor. In Armenian villages, the home tonir might also have been used traditionally to cook meat and to warm the house, and lavash has an almost mythical status among Armenians, even though homemade versions are increasingly rare.
At Lavash, a traditional village bakery had been recreated in the basement, and two women, sitting cross-legged on the floor, worked fast to produce enough lavash for a popular restaurant that must have at least 50 covers. I caught one of the bakers’ eyes, and she winked at me warmly. Although I had yet to meet an Armenian, I suddenly felt very welcome in this country, inducted into its symbolic hearth.
Armenians are known for their generosity of spirit and hospitality, and many of the dishes I would have liked to try were clearly meant for several people to share. I saw families sharing platters of khorovats, large pieces of meat on long skewers grilled over fire, and ghapama, large baked pumpkins stuffed with rice and raisins. I ordered aveluk, a delicious salad of wild sorrel, and a bowl of harissa, a soup-like porridge made of wheat and chicken.
I asked the waitress if she could recommend a glass of dry red wine. “Areni!” she announced and returned with a generous glass of red wine by a producer called Karas. Areni, an ancient thick-skinned red grape, is considered Armenia’s most noble red variety, and I had read comparisons of it to Pinot Noir. Actually, my first impression was of Nebbiolo… Or was it Nero Mascalese?
I wondered if it was fair to approach Areni, or any other of Armenia’s 400 indigenous grape varieties, through the lens of other winemaking regions. After all, I would never consider describing lavash in the context of a crêpe or a crumpet. Sprightly ripe red-fruit notes danced with a spicy earthiness—cherries, peppercorns, perhaps a pinch of ground cloves, perhaps a hint of licorice. There was stuff happening in this glass! A good start.
As I made my way back to the hotel, I realized that I no longer had the streets to myself. There seemed to be more and more people moving in the same direction, and I gave way to the throng. I soon found myself outside the Yerevan Opera Theatre, in front of which a massive screen was broadcasting the live concert inside. So here were the people of Yerevan! To the sounds of Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus, whole families were enjoying an evening out; some stood intent on the conductor’s baton, some sat and gossiped on camping chairs. Small children drove miniature dodgem cars for hire in a small pen or ran around, the lights in their sneakers flashing. The collective urban lights around me seemed to flash to the beat of the music, but perhaps it was the Areni talking.
A radically changing viticultural landscape
If I had been worried that I might spend a week without getting to meet any Armenians, the next morning Zara Muradyan, head of the Vine and Wine Foundation of Armenia, soon put my fears to rest. Her offices sit within Armenia’s Ministry of Economy, a Soviet Brutalist block built around a sunny inner courtyard. Muradyan, as glamorous and twinkly as a young Catherine Deneuve, was presiding over a small battalion in action. The walls of her office are lined with records of trade delegations to promote Armenian wine abroad—on a peg were some 50 lanyards from various global trade fairs, the most recent, from New York, added only days earlier. Several young colleagues, intense and focused, as if on a mission, came in and out. It was a hectic moment; the following week, the foundation would be cohosting a UN conference on wine tourism in Yerevan, and in a matter of hours she would be escorting the secretary general of FAO to visit a vineyard she had cultivated to showcase the diversity of Armenia’s indigenous grape varieties. Amid all this, she and her colleague Lianna Abelyan had helped me put together an itinerary in which I would encounter some of the pioneers of Armenia’s winemaking renaissance. In 1991, there had been only three or four wineries; there are currently more than 50 wineries and 150 wine brands. The creation of the contemporary Armenian wine industry is happening in real time—blink and you might miss yet another exciting new development.
Although herself a producer since 2013, Muradyan has devoted her life to unifying and promoting Armenia’s wine industry. In 2015, she was a key founder the EVN Wine Academy, where Armenian students can learn about every aspect of wine—from cultivating seedlings, to promotion of the finished product. EVN, the airport code for Yerevan, is linked to Geisenheim University, where EVN students can study and also take internships in many other international wine regions.
Muradyan knew Armenia’s winemakers could tell their own story, but she wanted me to be clear on the key facts. She explained that while neighboring Georgia had received the Soviet mandate to produce wine, Armenia had been designated the USSR’s brandy producer, a function celebrated when Stalin allegedly gave Winston Churchill a bottle of Ararat brandy at the Yalta conference in 1945. Churchill loved it so much that Stalin apparently sent him 400 bottles a year. (Ararat brandy is now produced in Armenia by Pernod Ricard.) While some 95% of Armenian viticulture had until 1991 been devoted to high-yielding grape varieties for brandy, the viticultural landscape is changing radically. Smaller than Belgium, Armenia features ecosystems ranging from alpine to desert, offering countless combinations of microclimates and microregions. Armenia’s situation in the Caucasus mountain range guarantees vineyard altitudes from around 2,600ft (800m) up to about 5,600ft 1,700m) above sea level—among the highest in the world. Its continental climate of around 300 long, hot days per year alternates with cooler nights and winters so cold, in parts, that vines must be buried in order to survive. While discussions about potential geographical indications have only recently started, five discrete regions already exist: Ararat, Aramvir, Aragatsotn, Tavush, and, the jewel in the crown, Vayots Dzor, the most mountainous and least suitable region for brandy production and therefore the only one that managed to preserve some of its traditional winemaking under Soviet rule. Phylloxera is virtually unknown across Armenia, meaning that most vines are ungrafted.
Inspired by Veuve Clicquot, Valpolicella, Burgundy
A taxi drove me toward the north of Yerevan, and after about 15 minutes, we veered from a highway onto an unpaved road going up a hill toward a disused salt mine, one of the many defunct castles of Soviet industry that haunt Armenia. I was dropped off in front of a plain building overlooking the tower blocks of a housing estate. The taxi drove off, and I wondered whether, in the absence of vineyards, there had been some misunderstanding. But I was soon greeted by Vahagn Gevorkian, whose intensity at first unnerved me, but his ready and warm smile soon reassured me. Inside, the winery is a riot of colors and textures of crafts and carpets, and I felt that I had walked through a looking glass.
For the next two hours, Gevorkian led me across his range of 20-something wines, taking in styles including pet-nat, appassimento, icewine, carbonic maceration, orange wine, and vinified pomegranate juice, as well as fine still dry red and white wines, all tasted using the Riedel glass created for Areni. It was like going from Franciacorta to the Veneto via Ontario and Beaujolais—but it was also like nowhere I’d ever tasted.
I wasn’t expecting Gevorkian to credit his winemaking inspiration to Veuve Clicquot, but a documentary film he had seen about the legendary Champagne-making widow had “a huge impact. […] Before that, I did not know that remuage was an idea of Veuve after 1811,” he said. “The biggest revelation for me was that the people who invest in winemaking are the ones who really innovate.”
In 2009, Gevorkian had participated in an Armenian–Italian educational initiative, Treviso per l’Armenia, which included a stint at the Scuola Enologica di Conegliano. Not only did it inspire his crafting of fine sparkling and white wines, it also taught him that vinified dried grapes could be the basis of fine wine. “Seeing how grapes are dried on racks in Valpolicella, I unintentionally remembered how in Armenia my grandfather hung the grapes on threads in his cellar to store them until wintertime,” he said. Kakhani is the name for the Armenian version of appassimento, and together we retasted his 2019 Ariats Kes Kakhani, or “half Kakhani,” half from dried Areni grapes and half from freshly harvested Areni grapes grown in the province of Vayots Dzor. A dry wine, it had an exciting nose that was a riot of berries and spices, borne out on the elegant palate. Its silky mouthfeel and subtlety could pleasurably accompany one all the way through from soup to cheese.
Realizing that I was running late for my next appointment back in downtown Yerevan, Gevorkian called a cab for me, but the ride back was much slower, because it was rush hour. I arrived rather flustered at InVino, a wine bar that has the feel of a cozy reference library: Bottles fill all available wall space, from floor to ceiling, and there are hundreds of Armenian and foreign labels on offer.
Perched on a bar stool, wearing a basketball cap bearing the logo of the Burgundy School of Business, sat a petite young woman, Aimee Keushguerian, one of Armenia’s most dynamic young winemakers. With her father Vahe, Keushguerian is in the vanguard of diaspora Armenians who have returned to build their country’s wine industry. Together they run WineWorks, which offers a full complement of wine-industry services, including a vine nursery, a full-scale winery incubator, and expertise ranging from management to marketing. The company has helped generate some 25 of Armenia’s best-known wineries and brands, including Yacoubian Hobbs, a joint venture between Paul Hobbs and the Yacoubian family.
Keushguerian grew up in Italy and later studied economic development at Hampshire College, in Massachusetts. “I was passionate about studying the growth of rural economies through micro-finance and social-enterprise initiatives,” she told me. She had never envisaged a career in wine, but when, in 2015, her father invited her to participate in the harvest for Keush, their sparkling wine, it was a “turning point. […] I realized that working in the wine industry was more than just winemaking—it was creating economic and social impact, by strengthening our communities and reinforcing Armenia’s borders,” she explained. “In a country that constantly faces geopolitical risks and escalation, supporting strong, self-sufficient border villages is essential. Vineyards have become a powerful way to help these regions thrive and remain resilient.”
We tasted Keush Extremis Rosé and Keush Ultra Blanc de Noir, both traditional-method brut nature wines, the Areni grapes for which came from 100-year-old vines located in Khachik Village, in Vayots Dzor, close to the border with Azerbaijan—vineyards that are claimed to be the highest in the world to produce traditional-method sparklers. As we tasted these fascinating, ethereal wines, which could hold their own among serious sparkling wines from anywhere, I couldn’t quite reconcile the festivity of the drink with the image Keushguerian was painting of vineyards warding off darkness. “Historically, vineyards have always been at the forefront of conflict,” she explained. “Because vineyards are perceived as assets for the conquering forces, they are usually spared from warfare and defended by the growers. In Armenia, particularly in border regions, growing vineyards helps create a continuous, peaceful presence. Cultivated land signals permanence and ownership.” Vayots Dzor is bordered on two sides by Azerbaijan, in conflict with Armenia, and the Keushguerians have worked closely with growers there, encouraging them to revitalize their vineyards, despite their proximity to two military bases.
Almost a decade into her unanticipated career as a winemaker, Keushguerian decided to consolidate and expand her knowledge with further study, and Burgundy seemed like the obvious choice. “What struck me was the parallel between the way vineyard land in Burgundy was divided over 200 years ago, and the challenges Armenia faces today following the post-Soviet collapse,” she explained. “Both regions have had to navigate fragmentation while preserving the uniqueness of their terroirs. And I envisage Armenian winemaking following in Burgundy’s footsteps.” We finish by tasting some excellent wines from Keushguerian’s independent Zulal range, dedicated to special-release wines, from different regions and lesser-known indigenous varieties, with enchanting names and attributes: Koghbeni, Nazeli, Movuz, Tozot, Jrjruk… Areni from Vayots Dzor is extraordinary, but there is more to the story, and Keushgarian is determined to tell it.
Areni and the progression from blood to wine
The next day, driven by Narek, one of Zara Muradyan’s trusted colleagues at the foundation, I headed to Vayots Dzor, to the town of Areni, where, in 2007, a team of Armenian, American, and Irish archaeologists excavated a three-chambered cave containing vinous artifacts dating from c.4100–4000 bce. The extraordinary cache at the Areni-1 cave included vessels used to make and store wine on a larger-than-domestic scale. There were clay amphorae known as karas, vats used to ferment wines, and various tools linked to winemaking. I learned that the shoe that I had admired in Yerevan had also been found here. Very significantly, there were residues of grapes that had clearly been domesticated. The evidence was conclusive: This had been nothing short of a working winery.
It took little imagination to sense that this had once been a hub of organized industry. For the first time since I had arrived in Armenia, I reached for my scarf. The drop in temperature immediately signaled the natural climactic control, the chill that one feels walking into any modern winery. My guide, a young archaeology student, explained cheerfully the theory that wine had eventually come to replace blood in ancient Armenian human sacrifices (though contemporary Armenian votive sacrifices still involve shedding the blood of animals ranging from cockerels to bulls). “They eventually realized that there was no need to kill anyone,” she said. Wine as a symbol for blood was of course eventually absorbed into Christianity. Was it a coincidence that Armenia was, in the early 4th century, the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity?
Directly from the cave, we drove only a few miles but leapt ahead five millennia to visit Noravank, a monastery founded in 1105 but significantly rebuilt in the 13th and 14th centuries. It looked like it had been dropped from the sky into a dramatic valley bordered by stark red cliffs. There was little evidence of other human habitation and no sense of the church having been part of a settlement. In fact, many Armenian monasteries operated as lookout posts, as well as seats of spirituality and learning, and Noravank had been strategically sited to spot potential invasions.
Armenian churches are unlike any I have seen elsewhere. Their unique features comprise what is possibly the first cohesive style of regional church architecture, a style thought to have inspired the Gothic. Noravank exemplified this indigenous Armenian style, whose defining feature is verticality, a sense of defying gravity. If I had visited just a couple of weeks earlier, I would have witnessed the ceremony of the blessing of the grapes before harvest, which has happened in Armenia’s churches for centuries. A young priest sitting by the altar got up as soon as he saw me and blessed me with a crozier, a special staff that is the privilege of vardapets, or senior monks, who are permitted to preach and teach. As is the custom, I did my best to exit the church walking backward. Before we left, I examined several of the khachkars outside. Unique to Armenia, khachkars are carved medieval stone steles depicting crosses and various other motifs. The earliest extant khachkar dates to 879 ce, and some 40,000 survive. In 2010, they were included in UNESCO register of intangible cultural heritage.
We stopped for a delicious lunch and a tasting of organic wines at the tiny boutique Old Bridge winery, owned and run by Armen Khalatyan, an electrical engineer who had worked for Save the Children, and his wife Ashkhen, a rheumatologist, who runs a clinic in a nearby town. They had produced a delicious winery lunch of local fish, lavash, platters groaning with dill, purple basil, parsley, and mint, several kinds of salads, and Armenian white cheeses, which seem to appear in endless varieties of texture, consistency, and tanginess. Narek, my driver, showed me how to make a patar, or wrapped morsel, by rolling a handful of mixed herbs and a piece of cheese in a piece of lavash. He told me this reminded him of jingalov hats, a herb-stuffed pastry typical of his native province of Syunik, near Armenia’s border with Iran. There were also olives, which I realized were the first I had seen Armenia. Some part of my limbic brain responsible for making associations (the hippocampus?) had somehow produced in me the notion that a delicious and sunny alfresco lunch must somehow equate with Mediterranean food. This fallacy needed challenging.
Khalatyan explained that olives are only latterly being cultivated commercially in Armenia. Although some olive trees had grown there for centuries, most probably due to trade with the Mediterranean, olives aren’t indigenous to Armenia. But there are so many other plants and fruits and grapes that are: The Caucasus is one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots. To qualify, a hotspot must have at least 1,500 indigenous vascular plants, among other criteria. We were consuming at least two of them. As we ate and talked, we drank a refreshing and characterful Areni rosé and 2018 and 2022 vintages of their rich and aromatic Voskehat, the white grape that many consider to be the noble indigenous white-grape counterpart to Areni. And I wondered if purple basil was perhaps another of the indigenous plants. Armenians traveling abroad are astonished that basil can also be green.
As we drove higher and higher toward our next destination, I couldn’t get the ancient Areni winery out of my head. I had heard a lot about karas before coming to Armenia, but nothing had prepared me for seeing these amphorae in such a context. Karas in modern Armenian winemaking, however, seem to present a conundrum. Because of the discovery of so many at Areni (and other sites), the karas has rightly come to symbolize the longevity of Armenia’s winemaking history. By extension, it seemed that, to some, the karas has also become a symbol of Armenia’s current winemaking prowess. There are ironies in this retrospective Utopianism. For one, karas had also been used by rural folk to make very rudimentary fermented concoctions at home, as well as for storing oil and even cooking. A karas that is used to store oil or cook lamb was not, it seemed to me, a perfect symbol of Armenia’s obvious winemaking talent. The wines spoke for themselves. Even more important, there are quite simply not enough karas to supply even a fraction of the burgeoning industry. Soviet rule had interrupted the cycle of karas craftsmanship, and there is no one left who knows how to make them.
One winemaker, above all, has devoted himself to karas—and his winery, Zorah, was our next stop. If the caves were a wonder of the ancient winemaking world, little prepared me for Zorah, one of the most striking modern wineries I have seen anywhere. At an altitude of 5,240ft (1,600m) and against a backdrop of reddish mountain peaks, I felt like I had been deposited at the top of the world. We were greeted by Zorik Gharibian, a diaspora Armenian who had grown up in Italy, where he had forged a successful career in fashion manufacturing. Ruggedly handsome and dressed as if for a hike into the surrounding wilderness, he seemed like a modern cowboy who had given his horse the afternoon off.
Gharibian told me that he had been astounded, coming from Italy, by Armenia’s drinking scene. “I first came as a tourist in 1998,” he recalled. “During the evening, I was eating and drinking wine and then waking up in the morning with a headache. But when I tried vodka, I didn’t have a headache. I saw the grape motifs on the churches but couldn’t connect them to a wine culture.” Gharibian thus made it his mission to connect Armenia to a “viticultural past” that had been eclipsed by 70 years of Soviet rule. “It was clear that amphorae and autochthonous grape varieties had to be at the center of the project,” he said. “When Zorah began, there was no interest in local varieties or traditional aging methods. Such little interest as there was in wine was focused on international grape varieties and completely ignored the use of karas.”
Gharibian, with input from consultant Alberto Antonini (see WFW 65, 2019, pp.106–09), set out to understand how best to use the karas for both fermentation and aging. They conducted experiments in which the karas were either fully submerged underground or else kept fully above ground. “When the karas was all above ground, it became very difficult to control temperature, particularly during fermentation,” he explained. “Moreover, with the entire surface area of the karas exposed to air, it resulted in wines that would often have too much oxygen contact. When the amphora was buried all underground, the temperature became stable, but the oxygen contact was minimal, and we felt like we could get more out of the karas.”
Gharibian finally settled on the “two thirds in and one third out” approach that had been used more than 3,000 years ago at Karmir Blur, on the outskirts of Yerevan, where archaeologists had uncovered more than 500 karas buried two thirds deep. He explained that the temperature difference between the buried and exposed sections permits gentle microoxygenation, stable temperature, and constant yet gentle rotation of the wine in the karas. Other variables affecting the wine include the temperature at which a given karas had been fired, because this can affect its permeability and thus the microoxygenation process. “It is important to know the ‘personality’ of each karas to match it to the desired style of wine,” explained Gharibian. “Our oldest karas is from 1900, while others are from the 1930s all the way up to the 1960s. We match amphorae that have a higher permeability with wines in which we are looking for expressiveness and boldness. Amphorae with less permeability are better for those wines for which we want verticality and freshness.” But if there is one thing about which Gharibian is adamant, it is that karas, unlike oak, do not impart anything to the wine per se, though they will emphasize any deficiencies in the fruit. “Clay is a fundamentally neutral material, and so the karas doesn’t give or take anything from wine,” he said. “Rather, it allows it to express the potential of the fruit and the terroir.”
An aide to a “head of state” had just visited to taste wines for an official cellar, and Zorah’s 2014 Voski had been under consideration, and so, exceptionally, it was available to taste. In Armenia’s young wine industry, it is rare to get a glimpse of the aging potential of wines, since the oldest wines are still so young and many of the very oldest already sold out. Voski, a white blend of Voskehat and Garandmak, a versatile indigenous white grape variety, is the only Zorah wine to have no karas contact, and it ferments and ages in cylindrical cement tanks, whose porosity allows for some oxygen permeability. Gharibian points out that cement tanks “can be considered the modern equivalent of the karas,” a more accessible means for other Armenian producers to experiment with micro-oxygenation. The 2014 Voski, still very much alive, had not lost the exciting juxtaposition of minerality and richness of the 2022 Voski. The 2021 Heritage Chilar—made from the near-extinct indigenous high-altitude white Chilar—is so delicious and exciting, as is the formidable, intense 2019 Yeraz, made from Areni.
Ararat Valley and a winery in exile
The next day, we drove some 12 miles (20km) out of Yerevan into the Ararat Valley, Armenia’s second-largest wine-growing region and its sunniest, especially suitable for Karmrahyut, a red grape variety whose name means “red juice” owing to its deep color, and Garandmak, a late-ripening white variety whose name means “lamb’s tail.” But Kataro, the winery we were going to see, does not feature these grapes and is in fact named for the Katarovank monastery, a world away. I had heard about Grigory Avetissyan, Kataro’s proprietor, from other winemakers, all of whom speak of him and his wines with subdued reverence.
From the Artsakh region, Avetissyan was inspired by a 1930s photograph of his grandfather cradling a bunch of grapes he has just picked from his vineyard. Avetissyan convinced his father that they should start making wine from Khndoghni (also known as Sireni), a rare indigenous red variety with very tight bunches producing intense and rich yet balanced wines. Soon after its first vintage in 2010, their Kataro Reserve became one of Armenia’s most critically and commercially successful fine wines.
In late 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Avetissyan and his winemaker Andranik Manvelyan were overseeing the harvest when the armed forces of neighboring Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh. As bombs exploded overhead, all the staff in the winery had to flee, taking only a few thousand bottles of Kataro Reserve and a few tons of grapes, leaving the 2019 vintage behind.
The rescued bottles were auctioned to help pay for a new winery, which occupies an abandoned silk factory. The outer walls of the architecturally featureless building are gradually being brought to life by a huge abstract painting of a folkloric motif, similar to the one that had graced the venue of an Artsakh wine festival that Avetissyan has started. He told me that when the displaced winery first arrived at its new home, he and his team made wine from “about four to five tons of grapes by hand, which helped to overcome the depression.” Otherwise, Avetissyan glosses over the deaths and heartache, not to mention the huge commercial loss. Some 100,000 Armenians living in Artsakh were displaced by the conflict, but Kataro is the only Artsakh winery to have survived in exile.
As we sat in the winery garden under a pergola and ate from platters heaving with melon and Armenian dry-cured ham, the mood was light-hearted. When I asked winemaker Manvelyan about the aging of Armenian wine, he riffed, “Karas? The best new is forgotten old. Karas is a new style. It is good because consumers want low-intervention wine. Good élevage with exchange.” Oak élevage was another story. Markedly different from French oak barrels, Armenian barrels’ influence on wine is more subtle and better suited to Armenia’s own grape varieties. But all of the oak for Armenia’s barrels has traditionally come from Artsakh and is thus no longer accessible. Most Armenian wineries are still using barrels bought before 2020, but soon they will need new ones. I wondered where Avetissyan thought an alternative oak might be sourced. “There are two options: Russia and Europe,” he said. “Maybe Tavush? I don’t know. We need to do some experiments.”
We tasted the excellent Kataro 2021, made from Khndoghni grapes that had initially been permitted to be driven across the contested border and had been vinified at the new winery; and then the Kataro 2022, made from Areni grapes from Vayots Dzor, when such a border crossing was no longer possible. Although Avetissyan acknowledged how different the two grapes are in so many ways, brilliant winemaking couldn’t be denied and has produced two similarly serious, complex, yet deeply pleasurable wines.
Unique versions of reinvention
The next day, we drove to Armavir, Armenia’s largest winemaking region, which is set in the heart of the Ararat plain between Mount Ararat and Mount Aragats, Armenia’s highest peak. On the way, I finally had my first glorious view of Mount Ararat. According to the Bible, Ararat was where Noah’s ark had landed and where Noah had planted his first vines, in around 2350 bce, a mere millennium or two after the Areni-1 wine cave had operated. I was so excited by Mount Ararat’s stillness and beauty that Narek laughed. He reminded me that this dormant volcano, its peak dusted with snow, had, in 1921, been ceded to Türkiye. Armenians who want to make the pilgrimage to their sacred mountain must first travel to Georgia, though Mount Ararat is only around 30 miles (50km) from Yerevan as the crow flies. I had been so close to Türkiye over the previous couple of days that twice I seemed suddenly to have gained a mysterious hour when the clock on my phone had automatically switched over to Turkish time.
I was discovering that every Armenian family had its unique version of exile and reinvention. I was having lunch with Ararat Mkrtchyan, whose family runs Voskeni, a winery in the village of Sardarapat. Mkrtchyan showed me a photograph from the 1920s of his grandfather, Smbat Matevossian, elegant in a tailored three-piece suit, tall hat, and wide tie. Having emigrated to Boston, Smbat decided to repatriate to Armenia in the 1920s, to make wine. “It was quite unusual,” admitted Ararat. “Many people from the Armenian diaspora chose not to return to Armenia because of the trauma of genocide and fear of Soviet repression. But my great-grandfather was different. He was a dreamer. He believed in building a new Armenia, inspired by the values he saw in America. That hope brought him back.”
Smbat was too much of a maverick for the Bolshevik authorities, who persecuted and eventually killed him. But before his death, Smbat had succeeded in buying some vineyards. Smbat’s son, Mkrtchyan’s grandfather, had moved to Soviet Russia, where Mkrtchyan’s parents and he himself grew up. “Over the years, my grandfather tried to find the case file related to Smbat, in order to find out where he was buried,” said Mkrtchyan. But such files were strictly classified, and his efforts were in vain.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mkrtchyan’s father continued the search. One day, a former KGB officer helped him gain access to the relevant archives and read Smbat’s case. “Although copying was not allowed, that’s how my father learned the location of the burial,” explains Mkrtchyan. “We also discovered details about the confiscated property—hundreds of cows, 1.5kg [3.3lb] of gold items, and land in Sardarapat, with a general description of its location. The description was vague, and it took us a long time to find the exact spot. We turned to the local cadastral office, who helped us understand which lands were nationalized before the Soviet era and in what quantity. That’s how, in 2008, we found ourselves standing at the edge of our vineyards, with the feeling that we had recovered a piece of our identity.”
In 2016, Mkrtchyan and his family engaged consultant Stéphane Derenoncourt. “Our advisers were shocked to see that the winery where they were going to consult had no roof,” recalled Mkrtchyan. “Julien, one of the French team, said to me in his French accent, ‘Aghaghat! Impouussible!’ My father, with no emotion, replied, ‘My dear Julien, all is possible.’”
The missing winery roof was a less intractable problem than the vineyard. “The French advisers said that we had way too many things to change in the vineyards before we even got to the winery,” Mkrtchyan told me. “In Armenia, people traditionally pruned vines in such a way as to maximize the yield in terms of weight. But we began by changing pruning methods to decrease the number of berries on branches. The villagers were very defensive, and they thought that we were insane.”
One evening, a group of villagers came to Mkrtchyan and his father with what they believed to be an ingenious solution: They would harvest the 30% that the Derenoncourt team had stipulated for Voskeni but keep back the “unwanted” 70% for themselves. It was only when they realized that they would actually be making the same income under the new system that they accepted it.
The work in the vineyard—and in the now-covered winery—is evident in Voskeni’s brilliant Areni and Voskehat wines, some of the finest examples of these varieties that I tasted. We enjoyed them over a delicious lunch prepared by Mkrtchyan’s mother Susanna Davoyan, who, having lived for decades in urban Russia, had gradually come to embrace the lifestyle of the vigneronne.
Garagistes, hobbyists, and the Beast of Alluria
On my last day, I was collected by Karen Tsharakyan, a sensitive and thoughtful lifelong city dweller who had recently embraced rural life. As we drove to the village of Sasunik, also in Armavir, he explained that he had chosen Stork as the name for his winery after the storks that migrate from Africa to Armenia in early spring. They build their nests on telegraph poles in the villages, where they rear their fledglings until their return migration in late fall, and Armenian villagers are very fond and protective of them.
Stork Winery was the newest and the tiniest of my trip—Tsharakyan is a proper garagiste. It took all of five minutes for him to show me around his winery, followed by his majestic German shorthaired pointer Ashoun, meaning autumn, the season when Tsharakyan had found him wandering the streets of a nearby town. In the garden were apricot and fig trees, from which Tsharakyan was learning to make jam.
“I live above the shop, basically,” Tsharakyan told me, referring to the garage under his house, which was built in 2021. Having grown up in Yerevan, where he also studied and began his career in international business development, Tsharakyan and his wife, Anna Hakobyan, moved to London in 2003 for her job at a UK NGO. In 2019, Tsharakyan decided to go into business for himself. “Rightly or wrongly, wine was the only business I considered,” he told me.
Next to the front door of his house-cum-winery is a plaque acknowledging the support of USAID “from the American People” and CARD, a local rural-development agency. He explained that Stork, like many beneficiaries in the wine sector, received assistance to buy the winery’s press and filter and the nearby vineyards’ drip-irrigation components. As a dual UK/US citizen, I was delighted that some of my tax dollars had gone to such a worthwhile cause but wondered what Tsharakyan’s neighbors might think of the newcomer in their midst. “I had a generally warm and positive welcome from my fellow villagers,” he told me. “I employ many of them on a seasonal basis, as well as permanently, and I am confident that they are all rooting for our success. I shop in local stores and use the services of the local tradesmen—mechanics, electricians, blacksmiths, and so on. The community sees the benefits, because wine businesses provide employment and rural development. I also host tours for pupils from the local school, and some of them have gone on to education in viticulture and winemaking.”
Despite having little formal training as a winemaker, in 2022 Tsharakyan released 600 bottles of 2021 Stork Areni Montepulciano, a successful and very attractive blend of Areni from Vayots Dzor and Montepulciano from Aramvir. The Montepulciano had been an experiment of a winemaker who had lost interest and sold it to Tsharakyan. Stork’s other wine is the deliciously aromatic white Stork Kangoun, made from Kangoun, a prolific and versatile indigenous white grape variety that is also used in brandy production.
Alluria, also in Armavir, was my next and final stop. Samvel Machanyan, a former banker, is the frontman for this family winery, the first Armenian winery to dedicate itself solely to natural wines. Machanyan has the charisma and kinetic energy of a great stage actor and seems always in motion, as if preparing to go on stage. And yet if there is drama in his story, there is no artifice. “Winemaking was so normal for our family that my brothers and I, as kids, thought that everybody in the world makes wine,” he recalled. “But our wines were never commercial—it was just a family hobby. In 2013, we had the idea to make our wines available to people outside our family circle, too, and so we started working on the name and labeling. Alluria was the name of a river that flowed next to our village, so we decided that we would name our creation after the name of the waters that watered our roots, and this is how Alluria was born.”
When Machanyan refers to his roots, he means the small village of Aylur, or Alyur, which was in Western Armenia but became part of modern Türkiye after the Armenian genocide. After the genocide, Machanyan’s ancestors were displaced to the town of Vagharshapat, home to Echmiadzin Cathedral, the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church, where Machanyan’s family has lived ever since. The stunning estate is planted with myriad fruit trees, and in homage to what had to be left behind, an untethered horse roams freely—a tribute to the Machanyan clan’s origins as horse breeders.
Having decided to begin commercializing their cottage industry, Machanyan and his middle brother soon realized that some training in modern winemaking might be useful. “When we first started, we didn’t know that whatever it was that we were doing was called natural wine,” he explains. “We thought that all wine was created this way, because that was the only way we knew.” Machanyan clearly has a Puckish streak, and I half wonder if he is pulling my leg. But he tells me that he and his brother took themselves to the EVN Wine Academy, to “put an academic stamp on our knowledge.” There they discovered that, in more conventional winemaking, yeasts are used to start the fermentation. Nonetheless, they resolved to commit themselves to natural-wine making. Machanyan had tasted and loved Vahagn Gevorkian’s pet-nat and so asked him for winemaking advice. “Gevorkian told me everything I needed to know to create pet-nat, but because I was so excited about having Alluria pet-nat, I missed everything that he told me,” recalls Machanyan. “I came back to the winery and said to my brothers, We are going to make pet-nat!”
Using Areni must from a wine-grower friend, Machanyan decided to bottle the wine three days into its fermentation, having assumed that the presence of CO2 was auspicious. “That was a very bad idea, because our bottles started exploding after about a month,” he says. “We bottled 96, of which 40 exploded on the same day.” Still, Machanyan was happy to learn the hard way, and the Alluria method evolved.
We tasted a wide range of intriguing and very accomplished natural wines, including the 2022 The Beauty, a white made from Voskehat and the 2022 The Special N1, a red blend of Karmrahyut and Haghtanak, which means “victory,” owing to the intense redness of its juice. As we tasted, a young couple, who were hiring the winery for their wedding, approached Machanyan to ask him about a motif that the bride wanted to have painted on the dance floor to match her wedding dress. Machanyan leapt to his feet to advise and delegated a group of five or so of his male family members to produce a sample. He came back, bearing a bottle of wine called The Beast of Alluria, which appeared to be the culmination of his winemaking imagination.
Machanyan told me that The Beast is a blend of parcels of Haghtanak and Karmrahyut from two different vineyards. Late-harvest parcels of each variety from each vineyard are fermented separately, resulting in four batches of low-acid, full-bodied wine with high residual sugar. This is then blended with fermented early-harvested grapes of the same provenance. The meta blend is fortified with a distillate made from Alluria grapes, and the resulting fortified wine is then aged in barrique for at least three and a half years.
As the midday sun intensified, Machanyan warmed to his theme: “Philosophically, people have to be afraid of The Beast—be afraid of the price, the bottle, the label, the smell, everything! But if it somehow reaches their palate, they will forget all their fears and close their eyes and see the king!”
We paused to taste The Beast, and it seemed to offer an explosion of all the attributes of every fine wine I have ever tasted. Suddenly, though, a violent smell wafted toward us. Machanyan’s clansmen had opened a large can of paint and were enthusiastically painting motifs on a piece of wood for the approval of the bride-to-be. Machanyan suggested that we move away, but I was in such a pleasant torpor of wine and sun, deep in thought, trying, not for the first time since I had arrived in Armenia, to wrap my palate around these new references. It would take me some time fully to understand what I had seen and tasted. But of one thing I was sure: The Beast would prevail, and I would return to Armenia and its vineyards as soon as I could.
INFORMATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Additional wineries I visited (whose wines I have scored 90 and above); most can provide tours, tastings, and delicious meals by prior arrangement ArmAs (armas.am)
Armenia Wine Company (armeniawine.am)
Hin Areni Winery (hinareniwine.am)
Jraghatspanyan Winery (jraghatspanyan.am)
Karas Winery (karaswines.com) Tushpa Wine Cellar (tushpawines.com)
Van Ardi (vanardi.com)
Vedi Alco (vedi-alco.com)
Voskevaz Winery (voskevaz.am)
Recommended wineries whose wines I have scored 90 and above
Krya Wines, NOA of Areni, Nor Areni, TUS, Zara Muradyan Wines
An excellent online resource about Armenian Wine
vwfa.com
Dates for the diary
May 21–23, 2026, Yerevan: Concours Mondial de Bruxelles Red and White Wines Session (concoursmondial.com)
June 5–7, 2026, Yerevan: Yerevan Wine Days Festival (yerewinedays.am/en)
Excellent source for group and bespoke hiking trips in Armenia (including the Vayots Dzor and Tavush wine-growing regions)
transcaucasiantrail.org
Recommended specialist travel agency for group and bespoke wine and biodiversity tours
johngrahamtours.com
Essential guidebook
Armenia & Nagorno Karabagh, by Tom Allen and Deirdre Holding, 6th edition (Bradt Travel Guides, 2023)
Documentary film about Vahe and Aimee Keushguerian and a daring winemaking venture in Iran
Somm: Cup of Salvation, directed by Jason Wise, (Forgotten Man Films, 2023)
