Wine & gastronomy
A full day in the valley where wine has been made for six thousand years — three producers, an ancient cave, and a long lunch under a vine.
Duration
10 hours
Group
Small group, max 10
Difficulty
Easy
Languages
EN · RU · DE · FR · IT · ES
Worth knowingWe keep this group to ten so that the cellars stay conversations rather than presentations. Non-drinkers are welcome and pay €20 less; tell us when booking.
Two hours down the highway, past Khor Virap and up into the gorges. Vayots Dzor means "gorge of woes" — an earthquake name — and it is now the heart of Armenian wine.
In 2007 and 2010 archaeologists here found the world's oldest known leather shoe, about 3500 BC, and the world's oldest known winemaking facility — a clay press, fermentation vats and grape seeds, roughly 6,100 years old. The shoe is in the History Museum in Yerevan; the cave is a working excavation you can walk into.
Stainless steel, French oak, and Areni Noir made in a contemporary style. A structured tasting of four wines with an explanation of how the industry rebuilt itself after the Soviet period, when Armenia was directed to make brandy and Georgia to make wine.
A long lunch at a family table: pork or vegetable khorovats over vine cuttings, tomatoes and herbs from the garden, lavash, sheep cheese, and whatever is in season.
A small producer working with old bush vines, some of them ungrafted and over fifty years old. Usually a barrel tasting if the winemaker is around, and they generally are.
Home winemaking as it has always been done here — karases, the buried clay jars, and wine poured from a jug. This is the least polished stop and, for most people, the one they remember.
Back in Yerevan around 19:00.
In the price
Not included
Stops in the order we visit them. Distances are indicative, not a driving route.
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Armenia's only standing Greco-Roman temple, a monastery carved into solid rock, and bread pulled hot from a clay pit oven.
Classic Armenia
The pit where Armenia's Christianity began, a red-rock canyon monastery, and the valley where wine has been made for six thousand years.
Yerevan
A half day through the pink tuff city Alexander Tamanyan drew in 1924, ending in the cellars where Armenian brandy has been made since 1887.
Want it privately?
Your own vehicle and guide, your own start time, and the freedom to linger where it is worth lingering.