YEREVAN-TOURINFO- Tom Mullen, who is a Contributor (Travel) of Forbes Magazine, writes about lifestyle, food and wine from a base in France, on November 4, 2019, wrote about the Armenian Wine in history, Armenia land and grapes and oak, even the value of the wines. He mentioned that Armenian wines—despite a checkered past—look toward a brilliant future. In a land resembling a cross between rural Utah, inland California and South Pass, Wyoming, with a capital city (Yerevan) that is safe, attractive and progressive, modern Armenian winemakers are diverse and hardy lot. This land (smaller than the country of Belgium or the size of the U.S. states of Delaware and Vermont combined) has in the past five years seen a grueling four-day war as well as a separate Velvet Revolution that toppled the government. This period also included a drinking revolution where wine bars in the capital of Yerevan blossomed tenfold, and 25 new wineries were founded in just 2018.
Beginning over a decade ago a series of archaeological ‘firsts’ were discovered in a Cliffside cave near the mountain town of Areni. These included the earliest known shoe, the oldest known brain tissue from the Old World and a 6,100-year-old winery—the earliest ever discovered on earth. In what is now known as the Areni-1 Cave, the public can view clay cylindrical containers (each more than a yard/meter in diameter) where wine was produced for burial ceremonies.
The truth is clear: whether for rituals or relaxation, Armenia’s descendants have been sipping fermented grape juice for millennia.
