Wine and food in Armenia: 9 days at the table
Armenia has been making wine longer than anywhere with evidence to prove it. The Areni-1 cave in Vayots Dzor held a winemaking installation dated to around 4100 BC, with a press, fermentation vessels and grape seeds, and the modern industry a few miles down the road is currently going through the mo
- Duration
- 9 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 4
- Best months
- May, Jun, Sep, Oct
- From
- $1,485 per person
This route is built around that, and around a food culture that is Caucasian and Middle Eastern at once and which almost nobody outside the diaspora knows. Nine days, four bases, two monasteries, and a great deal of time at tables.
Who it suits: people whose real interest is what is on the plate and in the glass. No walking beyond a stroll. Genuinely good for a group of four to six.
Your specialist: a named Armenia specialist here, with our long-standing Yerevan partner running the ground.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Yerevan. Night landing, transfer, room held from the previous night. Nothing before evening, and then a first dinner we choose: a modern Armenian kitchen rather than a folk restaurant, so that you start with where the country is now rather than where it was.
Day 2: Yerevan markets and a kitchen. Late start. The covered GUM market with the apricot and walnut sellers, the sujuk hanging in strings, the pickle counters and the twenty kinds of dried fruit. Then a cooking session in a private kitchen: dolma wrapped two ways, ghapama, and the tolma that every family argues about. Afternoon at the Yerevan Brandy Company for the cellar tour and a tasting that will change what you think brandy is. Evening free, because you will have eaten a great deal.
Day 3: Echmiadzin, and a village table. West to Vagharshapat and the Mother See at Echmiadzin, the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the ruined seventh-century cathedral at Zvartnots. Then lunch in a village in the Armavir plain: bread from the clay oven, khorovats cooked over vine cuttings, fruit from the garden, and the home-made vodka that will be pressed on you. Back to Yerevan. One more night.
Day 4: Garni, Geghard, and north to Sevan. The Hellenistic temple at Garni and the rock-cut monastery at Geghard in the morning, with the singing arranged, then over to Lake Sevan at about 6,200 feet (1,900 m) for the fish. Ishkhan, the Sevan trout, and the crayfish in season, eaten at a table by the water. Night at the lake.
Day 5: Over the pass to Vayots Dzor. South over the Vardenyats pass at about 7,900 feet (2,410 m), with the fourteenth-century caravanserai at the top, and down into the wine province, about three hours. Afternoon at a family cellar in Areni: the small kind, in a house, with the vats in the back room. Areni Noir is the red and it is unlike any grape you know, light in colour and high in acid, and the better producers are now making it seriously. Night at Yeghegnadzor or a wine estate. Two nights.
Day 6: The Areni valley properly. A full day on the wine. Two producers in the morning, one of them modern with stainless steel and one of them still working in karas, the Armenian clay vessel, which is the same idea as the Georgian qvevri and predates it in this valley. The Areni-1 cave itself, which takes forty minutes and is worth it for the perspective. A long lunch in a vineyard. Noravank at the end of its red gorge in the late afternoon light, which is when it is best.
Day 7: South to Syunik and Tatev. Two and a half hours south. The cable car across the Vorotan gorge, about 3.5 miles (5.7 km), to the ninth-century monastery, and lunch at a village house in the valley below where the food is mountain food, mutton and wild herbs and buckwheat, and different from anything you have eaten so far. Night at Goris.
Day 8: North to Yerevan, with Khor Virap. Four and a half hours back up the spine of the country, with Khor Virap in the Ararat valley on the way, where the monastery sits in vineyards with the closed Turkish border behind it and Ararat, 16,854 feet (5,137 m), above it if the day is clear. Final dinner in Yerevan at the best table we can get you, booked when you confirm rather than the week before.
Day 9: Departure. Free morning, a last coffee, a day room, and the airport when your flight goes.
What is included
Eight nights of accommodation with breakfast, private car with an English-speaking driver throughout, licensed English-speaking guides on five days, a private cooking session in Yerevan, the brandy house tour and tasting, four winery visits with the winemaker present, three long village lunches, the Sevan fish lunch, the arranged singing at Geghard, the Tatev cable car, all site and museum entries, restaurant reservations throughout including the ones that need calling in Armenian, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Yerevan partner team.
What we would change, and when
- Travelling in late September or early October? You will be here for the harvest. We shift the Vayots Dzor nights to whichever week the pick is running and you will find yourself treading grapes, which is not on the itinerary and happens anyway.
- Serious about wine rather than curious? We add a day, drop Tatev, and put you with the winemakers at four more estates including the newer projects around Aghavnadzor and Rind. Tell us at the enquiry stage and we will weight it that way.
- Want Georgia as well? The two wine countries next to each other are a genuinely interesting comparison: qvevri in Kakheti, karas in Vayots Dzor, and two completely different food cultures. Add five days over the land border.
- Vegetarian? Workable and better than in Georgia, because the Lenten tradition in the Armenian church produced a large repertoire of vegetable dishes. Tell us early and we brief every kitchen.
Honest notes
Armenian wine is good and it is not yet Bordeaux. The producers are small, the vintages are inconsistent, and a few of the estates aimed at visitors are better at hospitality than at wine. We take you to the ones making the wine we would drink, and we will tell you at the table which is which.
Portion sizes at a village table are not a suggestion. A khorovats lunch in the Ararat valley is four hours and six courses, and if you have a dinner reservation the same evening you will not want it. We build one big meal a day, not two, and we have learned this the hard way.
The home-made vodka is not optional in a social sense and it is strong. Your driver does not drink and you should let him take the wheel, which is the whole reason we do not put anyone in a rental car on this itinerary.
Vegetarian works. Vegan is harder, mainly because of butter and matsun. Both are workable with notice, and neither is workable if you mention it on day two.
The land border with Azerbaijan is closed. Armenia combines overland with Georgia and nothing else.
Built by your named Armenia specialist, checked against notes our founder made in the field.
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