The wines of Zorah Wines

Zorah Wines is a prestigious and highly successful Armenian wine company, founded in 2003 by Zorik Gharibian, an Armenian who grew up in Italy. From the start, the goal was to put Armenian wine on the map in the international top segment. That succeeded with the renowned Italian winemaker Alberto Antonini, who previously made wine for Antinori and Frescobaldi in Italy. Zorah works with indigenous Armenian grape varieties and uses amphorae to ferment the wine, as has been the practice in Armenia for 8,000 years.

Check out our wine made by Zorah Wines

Zorah Wines is above all the life's work of Zorik Gharibian and his wife Yeraz. He built a career in the Italian fashion world and planned to start a wine estate in Tuscany. But during a visit to his homeland he realized Armenia has a winemaking culture thousands of years old - it's here, somewhere, that winemaking must have begun some 8,000 years ago. But unlike neighboring Georgia, winemaking in Armenia had fallen seriously into decline. The Soviets had decided their wine should be made in Georgia, and their brandy in Armenia.

In 2003, Zorik got the dream in his head of putting Armenia back on the wine map, with wines that could compete with the best in the world, but also with wines that stood apart: wines with a terroir all their own, made from indigenous Armenian grape varieties and according to centuries-old production methods. It took more than ten years before Zorik could realize this dream with his first bottle of wine.

He chose a location with vineyards among the oldest in the world, at the foot of Mount Ararat, where Noah is said to have landed after the Flood. The vineyards lie at 1,400 to 1,600 meters above sea level, right next to 'Areni-1', a 6,100-year-old winery recently uncovered by archaeologists, and in the middle of the ancient Armenian wine region of Vayots Dzor. He planted indigenous Armenian grapes there: Areni Noir, Voskehat and Garandmak.

From the start, Zorik brought in one of Italy's best winemakers: Alberto Antonini, who was immediately fascinated by the special history of Armenian wine, the unique grape varieties, and the amphorae used here to ferment the wine. Antonini had previously been winemaker for prestigious Italian wineries such as Antinori and Frescobaldi. The vineyards are managed by Stefano Bartolomei, an Italian who had already earned his stripes well before coming to Armenia.

Together they decided to use the karas (as these earthenware jars are called in Armenia) - a real challenge for Antonini too, since knowledge of amphora winemaking had all but disappeared in the West. Only the Georgians had kept doing it all along. The two succeeded in their mission - they make undeniably special Armenian wines that can indeed compete with great wines from elsewhere, but with a character entirely their own, incomparable to anything else. Well worth trying. We currently have one wine from Zorah Wines in our range. You can view all our wines from Zorah Wines here.

If you want to know more about this winery, here you will find the link to the website of Zorah Wines.