With a heritage dating back thousands of years and a history tainted by Soviet rule, Armenia is now focused on resurrection, writes Anthony Rose.
Back in May, the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, a prestigious annual international wine competition famous for its rigorous blind tasting process, took place in Yerevan – a choice which was far from symbolic. In fact, the region pre-dates Rome.
Armenia is a land of superlatives: it became the world’s first Christian nation in 301CE, is home to one of the oldest continuously written languages and, significantly, contains the site of the oldest winery yet discovered. Excavations of the Areni-1 cave in Vayots Dzor began in 2007, involving teams from the Universities of Oxford and California, and the site contains a complete winemaking installation dated to around 4,100BCE–4,000BCE, including wine press, fermentation vessels, storage jars, drinking cups and grape residues. Found alongside human remains, it was an ancient ritual site in which wine played an integral part.
Nor is it an isolated find: the fortress of Teishebaini (Karmir Blur), unearthed near Yerevan in the 1940s and dating to the 8th century BCE, yielded seven cellars with 400 half-buried karases – Armenian clay vessels – with a capacity of 450,000 litres.
Wine’s grip on Armenian civilisation runs deep. Which is why the tagline ‘Armenia, the oldest newest wine country’ is both irresistible and a little double-edged. The ancient heritage is archaeologically unimpeachable. The modern story of exile, dispossession, reinvention and the assertion of identity through wine, barely two decades old, is the more compelling one.
Armenia is a small, landlocked nation bordered by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran. At around 11,500 square miles, roughly the size of Belgium, it’s home to a population of three million people, though 7m–10m live outside its borders as part of the Armenian diaspora. The country sits on a high plateau to the east of Mount Ararat, a dormant volcano with a peak elevation of 5,137 metres, and the alleged resting place of Noah’s Ark. The Armenian language rises and falls in a lilting cadence; its elegantly curved script is unique.
Yerevan, known as the Pink City for its 40 shades of volcanic pink stone, mingles ancient churches and neo-classical façades with Soviet brutalism. Tree-lined pavements are chock-full of cafés, the streets in constant logjam. Restaurants offer a varied cuisine focused on fresh vegetables and salads, herbs, grilled meats and herb-stuffed flatbreads. Above the arid valley floor, the twin snowcapped domes of Mount Ararat and its smaller sibling, Little Ararat, at 3,896m still higher than Mount Fuji, hover like floating clouds, seemingly following you wherever you go.
Wine country
Armenian wine country divides into five regions. Vayots Dzor is the established jewel: cool, high (950m–1,800m), with old vines and deep traditions surviving the Soviet era through remoteness; home to the Sev Areni and Voskehat grapes, and to producers such as Zorah, Hin-Areni and Yacoubian-Hobbs.
Then there is Aragatsotn to the northwest, which sits on ancient volcanic soils from Mount Aragats and has seen the biggest recent investment, with Van Ardi, Voskevaz and ArmAs among its notable names.
At nearly 6,000 hectares, Armavir is the largest region and the historic heart of brandy production, though MoonQ, Karas and Jraghatspanyan are among those recasting it as a serious wine zone.
Ararat, the sunniest region and second largest, runs hot and low, producing full-bodied reds.
Last but not least, Tavush, in the forested north-east, is the most rainfall-rich, historically important during the Soviet era, and home to producers Ijevan and Hovaz.
The modern wine revival has three engines. The first is the Armenian diaspora, which brings money, international savoir-faire and passionate attachment to the homeland. The second is outside expertise: Alberto Antonini at Zorah, Paul Hobbs at Yacoubian-Hobbs and, until his untimely death, Michel Rolland at Karas. The third is institutional. The Vine and Wine Foundation of Armenia (VWFA) was established in 2016 with a mission to develop local viticulture, promote the competitiveness of Armenian wines internationally, create the Wine of Armenia brand, and increase both consumption and export volumes. It has organised international tastings, pursued GI development, campaigned to shift domestic consumption from vodka to wine, and lobbied successfully for the abolition of the winemaking licence fee.
Armenian rhapsody: Queen guitarist Brian May features in the cellar at Voskevaz. Photo by Anthony Rose.
A subsidy programme introduced six years ago offers interest grace periods for new vineyard establishment, equipment subsidies, and 50% cost compensation for organic and sustainability certification. Its weakness, as MoonQ’s Tevan Poghosyan observes without rancour, is a minimum three-hectare land threshold that excludes the micro-producers making some of the most interesting wines; the smallest, most distinctive voices are precisely those least served.
Returners and refugees
The human stories that animate Armenian wine are, almost without exception, stories of leaving and coming back, or of being forced out and refusing to disappear. They take three distinct forms: the diaspora Armenian who returns by choice; the Artsakh Armenian displaced by war; and the international consultant drawn by curiosity and staying for conviction – and a fee.
Zorik Gharibian represents the first category most vividly: a diaspora Armenian who grew up in Italy and built a successful career in fashion manufacturing. Arriving in Armenia as a tourist in 1998, he resolved to reconnect Armenian wine to its historical roots, establishing Zorah, a striking modern winery at 1,600m against a backdrop of reddish mountain peaks. “When Zorah began,” he recalls, “there was no interest in local varieties or traditional ageing methods. Such little interest as there was in wine was focused on international grape varieties and completely ignored the use of karas.”
The stories of Artsakh, the disputed enclave seized by Azerbaijan in 2023, are harder. Andranik Manvelyan, Kataro’s winemaker, harvested grapes under shellfire in October 2020 within kilometres of active combat, escaped with 10,000 bottles of reserve Khndoghni, sold each for €100 to relaunch the winery, then delivered free wine to every customer in the following vintage. “We are Kataro because of them,” he says.
In 2023, founder Grigory Avetissyan smuggled 1,200 Khndoghni cuttings back to Armenia in Russian peacekeepers’ trucks; they are growing at a new facility, a former Soviet silk building whose walls are being painted with murals replicating those of the original winery. Kataro is the only one of Artsakh’s 15 former wineries to have restarted production. The new vines won’t be ready until 2031-32.
“It’s not about the wine,” says Manvelyan. “It’s about the emotions that will be in the bottle.”
Tevan Poghosyan’s story runs parallel. A diplomat and former MP born in Stepanakert, he started making wine in 2004 – just 100 bottles a year. After the 2020 war, his children pressed him to turn professional. MoonQ, from the Artsakh dialect word for ‘we’, was born, devoted to Nrneni, a variety until recently considered lost, of which only half a hectare survives. A cross of Cabernet Sauvignon, Alicante Bouschet and Saperavi, it is unique in Armenian viticulture.
Going to pot: making karases is a lost art. Photo by Anthony Rose.
Karas, Kakhani and the scientific method
Winemaking techniques are as varied as the producers themselves, but one vessel appears everywhere: the karas, Armenia’s large, egg-shaped clay amphora, coated with beeswax, with a narrow mouth. It differs from the Georgian qvevri, which is buried entirely underground and round-bottomed, in being lighter in colour, made from limestone-rich clay, and traditionally stored in elevated rows or terraces, rather than buried. It is both a symbol and a technical tool.
Gharibian has spent years systematising the karas, settling on the “two-thirds buried, one-third exposed” approach documented at Karmir Blur 3,000 years ago: the buried section provides temperature stability; the exposed section permits gentle micro-oxygenation. “Clay is a fundamentally neutral material,” he says. “The karas doesn’t give or take anything from wine; it allows it to express the potential of the fruit and terroir.”
The practical problem is existential: Soviet rule interrupted the tradition of karas-making, and there is today nobody in Armenia who knows how to make them properly. The supply, sourced from old rural families, abandoned farmyards and archaeological salvage, is finite and dwindling. The karas has become the marketing emblem of Armenian wine’s ancient credentials at precisely the moment when authentic vessels are running out.
Volcanic terrain
Voskevaz, a family-owned estate founded in 1932 that sits on entirely volcanic terrain in Aragatsotn, pairs karas with the Kakhani method: the drying of whole grape bunches on wires, concentrating flavours à la Amarone, as village winemakers have done for centuries. Architecturally, Voskevaz is a hoot: a mock-medieval Disneyland-meets-Game of Thrones series of fortresses and towers whose hilarious kitschness belies the fact that this is a serious winemaking operation, making whites and reds from indigenous varieties of the highest quality. You arrive with a smirk and leave with a broad smile.
Gevorkian, based in a former Soviet glass production facility in Yerevan, studied early sources, codified the bunch-drying method, registered it with the government and relaunched it in 2012. Three expressions cover the range: Kes-Kakhani (50% fresh, 50% dried; 14% ABV), Classic Kakhani (100% dried; the Amarone equivalent at 16%); and Sweet Kakhani (dried to 40° Brix; 100g/l–120g/l residual sugar). The winery also makes pét-nat, orange wine and fruit wines including pomegranate wine, its most important product commercially. Artem Jraghatspanyan takes an entirely different path: rigorous, scientific, data-driven. His family made wine in Bambakashat, Armavir from the 1890s, but Jraghatspanyan spent 21 years at the Yerevan Brandy Company, conducting 200 trials over eight years before registering the winery in 2018. He works with 10 grape varieties, vinifying six, and buys grapes at 10%-12% above market price across 15 contracted hectares, all within a few kilometres of the winery.
Bible story: Mount Ararat is said to be the last resting place of Noah’s ark
The Soviet legacy
The Soviet period haunts Armenian wine at every turn, in the infrastructure inherited, the traditions suppressed and the identities forcibly redirected. The Yerevan Brandy Company is a reminder that Armenia’s viticultural identity was for most of the past century distilled rather than bottled.
The Soviet authorities designated Georgia as wine producer and Armenia as brandy supplier. Winston Churchill was a devotee of Ararat brandy, and it remains as good as any Cognac or Armagnac today, but the designation came at a cost: the neglect of indigenous grape varieties and the near-extinction of the karasmaking craft. The Ijevan Wine and Brandy Factory in Tavush, founded in 1951, carries this history in its walls: eight underground rooms from the 1930s, four metres below ground with paraffin wax-coated walls, served as a clandestine winemaking facility when production had been officially redirected to Georgia and Moldova. Today Ijevan produces around 2m bottles annually from seven indigenous varieties, with an excellent premium range made by hand with natural fermentation; no added yeasts, no bentonite.
One further consequence of Soviet-era isolation: limited access to French oak barrels, which pushed producers towards indigenous Caucasian or Armenian oak instead. The barrels are crafted with bespoke toasting profiles to suit the wood’s tight grain, and over multiple vintages the hand-assembled staves naturally shift, giving them a slightly uneven appearance. “As long as it doesn’t leak, it is fine,” one winemaker says, with typical Armenian directness. The irony is sharp: Artsakh’s oak forests, which supplied much of the wood, are now inaccessible following the 2023 Azerbaijani takeover.
New directions
Against this backdrop of ancient traditions and Soviet shadows, newer producers are finding their own paths. Hin-Areni, founded in 2013 in the village of Areni itself, farms 25ha of certified organic vines on their own roots at an altitude of 1,250m and produces clean, precise wines that serve as a good introduction to the two varieties that dominate Armenian wine production, Voskehat and Sev Areni.
Hovaz Wine Rooms in Dilijan, opened in 2022 by a women-led team, contracts with local farmers, pays above-market prices and controls all vineyard processes. Its name is the Armenian word for leopard, marking the species’ return to Armenia. Its signature experience invites visitors to participate in the disgorgement of a traditional-method wine and leave with a personalised, numbered bottle from a limited edition of 1,500.
Dominating presence: Mount Ararat and Little Ararat loom over Armenia’s capital, Yerevan
On Yerevan’s Saryan Street, known locally as ‘Wine Street’, In Vino and a cluster of neighbouring bars (Urban, DV Wine Library, Decant, Collective, Vino&Vino) reflect an increasingly confident domestic wine culture. Mariam Saghatelyan, an Armenian-American sommelier who co-founded In Vino in 2012, recalls there being “maybe 10 drinkable Armenian wines” when she started. Today the bar stocks over 600 local labels and has become both a showcase for the renaissance and a community hub, with a growing emphasis on lower-alcohol wines and pét-nat.
Zaruhi Muradyan, executive director of the VWFA, described hosting Concours Mondial de Bruxelles in Armenia as “not only an honour, but a strategic opportunity to present Armenia’s wine heritage, contemporary winemaking and growing international ambitions to some of the most influential voices in the global wine world.”
Armenia’s Minister of Economy Gevorg Papoyan highlighted wine as an increasingly important export category, with the country actively seeking stronger trade relationships in European markets. Armenia’s wine renaissance is not primarily a lifestyle story. It is a story about a people using wine, as they have for 6,000 years, to say: we are still here and we’re going places.
Armenian wine: facts and figures
• Production peaked at 14.1 million litres in 2023 before falling sharply to 10m litres in 2024 and 7.7m litres in 2025, the lowest since 2016.
• 178 active winemaking companies and approximately 12,000 growers.
• 95 producers make fewer than 5,000 bottles (up from only 11 in 2020); only five companies exceed 1m bottles.
• Total cultivated vineyard area: around 13,000 hectares (roughly 10% table grapes, 15%–20% wine grapes, the rest used for brandy).
• Total grape wine exports in 2025: approximately 4m litres, worth US$19m, down from the 2022 peak of 4.8m litres, although value has held up better, suggesting a shift towards more expensive wines.
• Fruit wine exports add a further 4.4m litres (US$12.3m), making Armenia’s total export picture more complex than grape wine alone suggests.
• Russia’s dominance is stark and persistent: 80.2% of exports by volume in 2025 (83.2% in 2023). In absolute terms, 3.24m litres worth US$13.6m.
• Other leading markets: US (4.9% export share), France (2.3%), Poland (1.6%), Belgium (1.3%). All markets outside Russia combined account for less than 20% of volume.
• The UK imported nearly 20,000 litres worth US$124,000 in 2025, up sharply from US$52,749 in 2024.
• Per capita wine consumption has risen from 2.0 litres in 2016 to 4.8 litres in 2025, a 140% increase in nine years, driven by the government’s pro-wine campaign.
Anthony Rose visited Armenia as a judge at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles and as a guest of the VWFA. For tasting notes and scores of Anthony’s favourite 25 wines, please see his Substack column.
—