A storm over Aghavnadzor#
The storm crossed the valley ahead of us. By the time the minibus turned off the M2 at Aghavnadzor the rain had moved on toward Yeghegnadzor, the light was coming back over the slopes, and a rainbow stood on the mountain above the village for as long as it took us to park. It was the first week of October in Vayots Dzor, Armenia. The harvest was mostly in, and the air smelled of wet dust and crushed grapes.
Trinity Canyon Vineyards sits here at about 1,300 metres, between Areni and Yeghegnadzor, on the stretch of the Arpa valley I know best. Hovakim Saghatelyan was waiting by the cellar door with a towel over his shoulder. Not for us; for the crates.
Four partners and a book called Aygi#
The estate was founded in 2009 by four partners. Hovakim Saghatelyan runs it as executive director. Artem Parseghyan is the oenologist and cellar master, and teaches at the EVN Wine Academy in Yerevan. Vahe Baloulian owns In Vino, the wine bar on Saryan Street in Yerevan, and The Club restaurant. Andranik Grigoryan, also a restaurateur, looks after strategy. Two of the four come from the restaurant trade, and it shows in how the place receives you.
That bar is how I came to know the estate. On an early trip to Yerevan, years before I brought a group, I sat at In Vino with a glass of their Areni Noir and asked where it was from. The answer was a village I had driven through twice without stopping. I stopped the next time.
Hovakim has written a book called Aygi. The word means garden in Armenian, and it is also what people here call a vineyard: a khaghoghi aygi is, literally, a grape garden. That is worth knowing before you walk the rows with him, because he talks about vines the way a gardener does, plant by plant, not in hectares.
Organic farming at 1,300 metres#
Trinity Canyon is widely described as Armenia’s first certified organic wine producer: no synthetic pesticides, no synthetic fertilisers. I asked Hovakim whether the altitude makes that easier or harder. “Both,” he said. “The sky is dry, so the vines are healthy. The winters are cold, so the vines are honest. Nothing here is easy, but nothing here is complicated either.”
He is right about the sky. Vayots Dzor sees roughly 250 to 400 millimetres of rain a year, and the air at this height is thin and dry, which keeps fungal pressure low. Organic viticulture in South Moravia, where I live, is a fight against damp every June. Here it is a matter of attention and patience. I try not to say this too loudly to my Moravian friends.
The vines are Areni Noir and Voskehat above all, with a little of the international grapes as well. The valley’s soils change from one bend of the road to the next, limestone and calcareous clay, volcanic tuff and basalt, iron-red hillsides, and Hovakim will hand you a stone from between the rows rather than describe it. Harvest at this altitude comes late, from the end of September into mid October, and the cold nights hold the acidity while the days finish the sugar.
Karas, a modern cellar and the sulfur I did not ask about#
The house works with clay and with a modern cellar, across four lines. “6100” is the main line, white, rosé and Areni Noir; the number is the age in years of the Areni-1 winery about ten kilometres down the valley, the oldest known complete wine-making installation anywhere. “Ancestors” is fermented and aged in clay karas. “EH!” is the top tier from the modern cellar, named after a letter of the Armenian alphabet. “Crossroads” is a white.
Artem took us to the karas. He is a teacher by temperament as well as by job, and he explained clay plainly: the vessel breathes a little, it holds the wine at a steady cool, it gives nothing of its own flavour if it is clean, and cleaning it is most of the work. “Oak talks,” he said. “Clay listens.” The long version is in my article on qvevri, karas and amphora.
On sulfur I did not ask, and I will be precise about what I know. The house’s stated position is low intervention. The numbers are not printed on the label, and I do not put figures in other people’s mouths. What I can report is how the wines taste, and they taste clean and unforced, fruit in front and the winemaking behind it.
The era of traditional wines has returned.
That is the sentence the house uses about itself. In Aghavnadzor, with a karas in front of you and a 6,100-year-old winery down the road, it does not sound like marketing.
One glass: the 6100 Areni Noir#
I poured the Ancestors karas wine after it, and the difference did the teaching: rounder, an earthy edge, the fruit a step further back and the texture a step further forward. I ask guests which they prefer and keep my own answer to myself, mostly.
The table#
We ate outside, at a long table the storm had left wet. Lavash, still soft from the tonir, and a plate of herbs: tarragon, basil, coriander, spring onion. Salted cheese. Tolma in vine leaves. Then khorovats off the grill, pork and lamb, with peppers and aubergines that had collapsed into their own smoke. There were grapes on the cloth because there were grapes everywhere that week.
A neighbour who cooks on harvest days would not sit down until the last skewer was off the fire. The 6100 white went with the herbs and the cheese. The Areni Noir went with everything, which is the grape’s habit. Hovakim opened an Ancestors for the khorovats and said nothing about it until somebody asked, which is also a habit I admire.
Aghavnadzor on tour#
Trinity Canyon receives visitors from 11:00 to 19:00, closed on Mondays, and announces harvest events each autumn. On my Armenia tour we come in the afternoon, after the Areni-1 cave and Noravank in the morning, so the number on the label means something by the time you read it. In the same village, Yacoubian-Hobbs makes polished, modern Areni with the Californian Paul Hobbs; I take groups to both on the same afternoon, and the walk between them is the shortest lesson in winemaking choices I know. Vayots Dzor is the spine of the route, and Aghavnadzor is the day I would not move.
The same afternoon opens the two cradles route, where we go on from Armenia’s karas to Georgia’s qvevri and argue, gently, about whose clay is older. Dinner is in Yeghegnadzor, usually at Old Bridge, and the bus is quieter by then, which is the sign of a good day. For the wider picture, start with my guide to Armenia.
Hovakim walked us back to the bus as the last light left the slope where the rainbow had been. Aygi means garden. After an afternoon in Aghavnadzor it seems the right word for a vineyard, and the right size for an ambition.
