TN: Two Armenian Wines...(short/boring)

These two showed up at KoKo, so thought I’d take them for a test drive:

  1. Yacoubian-Hobbs Aghavnadzor Vayots Dzor/Armenia (14%; Voskehat/Khatuni/Qrdi/GaranDemck indigenous varieties; www.YacoubianHobbs.com) DoveCanyon/Vayots Dzor/Armenia 2018: Med.gold color; fairly fragrant appley/quince light floral/apple blossom rather stony/chalky quite interesting fairly attractive nose; bit soft/fat fairly stony/chalky/rather perfumed talc light appley/quince/floral/carnations rather lush/fleshy flavor; med.short soft/fat light stony/chalky/perfumed talc light appley/quince finish; a pleasant enough some interesting white but a bit on the bland/innocuous side; this is how PaulHobbs would make wine in Armenia if he could; interesting nose a bit Fiano like but fails to deliver on the palate; way overpriced at $27.50 (KK)

  1. Yacoubian-Hobbs Areni Rind VayotsDzor/Armenia (14.5%; Areni indigenous grape) 2016: Med.color; quite earthy/loamy some grapey/blackberry/licorice/some Refosco-like light toasty/oak rather interesting if rustic nose; soft/fat/some underacid fairly grapey/blackberry/Syrah-like/Refosco-like/licorice light toasty/oak some earthy/dusty/OV/loamy fairly rich/lush bit alcoholic/fumey flavor w/ modest chewey tannins; very long rather soft/fat some grapey/blackberry/licorice light toasty/oak bit alcoholic some earthy/loamy/rustic finish w/ light chewey tannins; reminds mostly of Friuli Refosco than anything but not the structure; this is how PaulHobbs would make Areni in Sonoma if he could; a rather interesting red but pretty overpriced. $32.50 (KK)

A wee BloodyPulpit:

  1. This is a partnership of the Armenian family Yacoubian and Paul Hobbs. These are all indigenous Armenian grape varieties for which I gather there has been no DNA work. Don’t see from this example that Armenia, the birthplace of winemaking, is the next hot winemaking region in the World, though the views are quite scenic.
    Tom

You wonder how much tradition was lost with collectivization in the Soviet era. And perhaps there was never a tradition of high quality in a poor, isolated area. Given that Armenia is still a poor country, producing high-quality wine on a small scale might not be very viable.

Having tried a lot of Turkish wines, there are parallel issues there. Winemaking was a Christian activity, and most Christians left after the First World War. After that, winemaking was dominated by large state-owned companies. Only in recent decades have small wineries with quality ambitions emerged.

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Probably the same for Georgia and other areas.

Croatia is slowly starting to build quality wine, which they are definitely capable of making. But from out of the Soviet Bloc and then the ashes of the subsequent wars, it’s just going to take time. Montenegro is probably another place.

Don’t think this applies to Slovenia. Because of their proximity to Friuli; they were well ahead in the quality game.
Tom

I think you’re right about Slovenia, Tom. Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet Bloc, let alone the Soviet Union. It was an independent kingdom between the wars and, though it became communist after the war, Tito split from Stalin in 1948, and his form of communism was more authoritarian than totalitarian. I’m not sure, but I don’t think Yugoslavia had widespread forced collectivization of agriculture, either.

Slovenia also had lots of cultural and economic links to Italy and Austria, and it was quite quickly absorbed into the EU and NATO in the 2000s. I think I read at the time that it had a quite healthy per-capital GDP.

As for Georgia, it produced excellent, highly-valued wines going back to the czars, so at least they have a strong tradition to draw on there.

A big problem now that you highlight, Tom, is that too many wineries in these developing economies are being tutored to make clean, modern wines with no personality. From my (limited) tasting of Slovenian wines, I think they are fighting off that trend more successfully. And the Georgians are capable of producing some really wild, unmodern stuff.

Yup…prettty much agree w/ what you say, John. I have very close ties to Slovenia thru graduate school days & institute Josef Stefan (one of my graduate school colleagues in Nuclear Engineering was Slovenia’s
first Minister of Energy…famous guy…me?? Not so famous!!). Slovenia was the first to break from Yugoslavia and has always been much more Western oriented than the other Yugoslavian republics.
And it shows in their wines, I think. Croatia is well down the path of the Slovenian model.
Tom

So I was really excited to find that Yacoubian-Hobbs wine. I was renting a house from an Armenian family and thought I’d bring one as a gift, thinking they’d never be likely to encounter it. About a half mile away is an Armenian store and near that is a pretty big wine store. I wandered in and BOTH of them had that wine.

Damn! But you figure it’s an Armenian area so where else would they sell that.

The wine is OK. Nothing to go out of your way to find, but decent stuff.

Slovenia, Armenia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and so many other places over there clearly have the climate for wine and they have the ancient history, but unfortunately the fact that wine was made centuries ago doesn’t mean much - we would never want to drink most of it. But there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening in that region (perhaps there always is) and the wines are getting better and better. As long as they can avoid trying to make more Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and can find something more compelling, they’re going to be OK. I hope so anyway.

Thanks for these notes. I have a couple Armenian tastings planned over the next couple months. It seems from what I have read so far that they have really had to start over in the last fifteen years from scratch. Property issues left from the Soviets and other issues make it even harder. It will probably take longer to develop than many areas for those reasons plus all the normal issues with making wine. its been hard to find wines for the tastings, but it seems the LA area, with its large Armenian population, has the best selections. Having Hobbs name at least gives it a touch of credibility.