Armenia Fund

Armenia Fund continues its new series on welcoming developments in Armenia, including Artsakh. For over two decades, the Fund has been doing humanitarian work throughout Armenia and this series is a showcase of encouraging initiatives, some that are a direct result of Armenia Fund’s work and some that are the product of innovation and pure determination.

In Vino Veritas

Pliny the Elder was convinced that in wine, there is truth - in vino veritas. His early adage about the drink has been followed by thousands more seeking to succinctly express its mystical properties. Whatever the motivation behind the millennia-long enchantment with wine, it has returned to Armenia.

Zorik Gharibian is a fashion mogul in Italy. You might even have bought clothing in Los Angeles manufactured by his company without knowing it. Growing up in the wine-obsessed culture of Italy, he dreamed of one day tending to his own vines in the country’s famed Tuscany region. Until he visited Armenia, that is.

After running soil tests at university laboratories in Italy, Gharibian was assured that the traditional winemaking area of Vayots Dzor in southern Armenia would be the ideal place for his vineyards. He chose Rind as the center of his operations, not far from Areni, where the world’s oldest winery was discovered.

Karas, in Armenian, translates to amphora, the clay jars in which wine was aged for thousands of years before the advent of wood barrel aging. These are the jars that were found at the ancient winery in Areni. Karasi is the name of Gharibian’s most famous production thus far. Listed among bottles of wine costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, it was chosen as a top 10 wine by Bloomberg from a field of over 4,000 wines. (Click here http://blog.armeniafund.org/?p=1159#gallery

for the full article).

Above: Wine being aged in amphora and traditional wooden barrels at Zorah Wines.

Above: Local workers tend to the grapevines.

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