Armenia on Dante Minutello · Wine Tours with a Sommelier

Armavir and the Ararat plain

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

Drive west out of Yerevan past the airport and within twenty minutes the city gives way to a flat, irrigated plain with a single object on the horizon. Mount Ararat, 5,137 metres, stands across the closed border in Turkey, and on a clear morning it seems to hang over the vine rows with nothing in between. This is Armavir, the province that holds nearly half of Armenia’s vineyards, and the part of the country’s wine map most of my guests have never heard of.

Aragatsotn wine region: Voskehat below Mount Aragats

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place: Ashtarak, the Kasagh gorge and the villages under Aragats#

Aragatsotn is the wine region I use to show guests that Armenia is not one climate. It lies north-west of Yerevan on the southern and eastern slopes of Mount Aragats, Armenia’s highest at 4,090 metres, and the province tilts from the Ararat plain to alpine meadow in about 40 kilometres of road. The vines occupy the lower third of that tilt.

Vayots Dzor: Armenia's Areni Noir country

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

The place#

Vayots Dzor is the valley of the Arpa river, south of Yerevan on the highway to Goris, and it is the one region of Armenia I would not leave out of any tour. The province names the country’s best-known wine region; the village of Areni names the grape. Roughly 1,200 hectares of vines grow here between 1,000 and 1,800 metres, among the highest vineyards in the northern hemisphere.