Rosé
Someone made the first Armenian Rosé and we are really glad they did. Typically made from Areni fruit, Armenian rosé is the perfect way to start a meal on a hot summer evening.
Most rosé wines are made in a dry style and feature light red fruit and crisp acidity. We like the wines from Hin Areni, Trinity Canyon, and Van Ardi. ArmAs makes a very interesting rosé from Kharmrahyut grapes which is worth trying.
White Wines
As excited as we are about the current crop of Armenian red wines, we don’t yet feel the same way about the whites.
Voskehat is the primary grape used to make Armenian white wine. To us it tastes like a white Rhone Valley grape. The fruit flavors are usually of citrus or melon and there are some floral/honey tones, but Voskehat wines lack the exuberant fruit of a grape like Viognier or the pungent crispness of a Sauvignon Blanc.
Armenian wine makers are looking to blends of several grapes to create white wines of complexity, fruit and balance. Voskehat is typically blended with other indigenous white grapes such as: Garan Dmak, Kangun, Khatun Kharji, and Qrdi. Some non-Armenian white wine grapes, such as Chardonnay, Muscat and the Georgian grape Rkatsitely are also grown and used in the blends as well. The blended whites show promise, but similar to the blended red wines, finding the optimal recipe is still a work in progress.
Check out our wine reviews for the few white wines we do think you should try.
Sparkling Wine
Armenians like to celebrate special occasions, so making sparkling wine makes sense. Karas makes both a good dry Brut sparkler and a sweeter Spumonte style wine as well. Kuesh, the first Méthode Champenoise sparkling wine made in Armenia is now in the market, but we have yet to try it.
Dessert Wines
Most Armenian wine made in the Soviet period were sweet wines and many continue to made today. We did not focus on them in our first tasting trip, look forward to trying them in the future.