Avetisyan Winery, Armenia. Answered in writing, in Armenian, November 2, 2026.
On the harvest day Gor Avetisyan remembers best, the rain started around nine in the morning. His crew had been picking since seven or eight, bringing in Voskehat he had bought from farmers whose vineyards lay about 300 kilometers from the winery, and for the rest of the day the weather kept changing its mind, rain and then sun and then rain again, until everyone in the rows was soaked through and still picking. It was late evening by the time the grapes reached the winery. Then the electricity started failing and the pump with it, and the last of the Voskehat went in at dawn.
He told me about that day in writing, in Armenian, after a harvest that had kept him from answering any sooner. In late October he wrote to say the picking in Armenia was still going and would run to the end of the month, a month or two behind most of the regions I write about. Gor doesn't speak English, and he said so early on. When the twenty questions reached him in Armenian, he wrote back and asked for the English originals as well, so he could be sure what each one was really asking. His answers came in on November 2, and I read them that day in translation.
His schooling was at the Armenian National Agrarian University, and most of the rest of it happened in cellars. Garush Samvelyan was one of the people who guided him. At Gevorkian Winery he worked harvests that often ran around the clock, and that was where he learned the discipline the work asks for. Later, at a brandy factory, he learned to blend brandy and distill spirits, and in time to run the whole plant, from the raw material arriving at the gate to the finished product going out.
He counts his winemaking life from 2014. The cellars he worked in then still ran on equipment left over from the Soviet years, and much of what he knows he learned by getting that equipment to do the job anyway. He was part of the modernization that came after, as Armenian wine climbed toward the level it holds now, and he has noticed that people starting out today mostly can't picture what it looked like before. He is now director and winemaker at Avetisyan Winery and consults for other wineries.
The harvest he remembers going wrong was an Areni rosé. The grapes were crushed at another winery and the must trucked to his own, which made the whole thing complicated from the start, and partway through fermentation the valve on a heating jacket was left open and the wine began to overheat. He caught it and cooled the wine back down. He had been writing down everything he did to that wine, hour by hour, and it turned out to be one of the best Armenian rosés of its year. For several years afterward the winery's owner kept calling to ask how it had been made, until Gor finally handed over his notes.
When I asked what someone new to wine would need, he said math and chemistry, and then something Armenians call kt'i tsak, a hole in the nose. He explained it as a fine sense, a kind of perception, and said it works alongside the knowledge and the experience.
The wine he would pour for a stranger is his TAPI Areni. Areni is also the name of a village in Vayots Dzor, and in a cave in the limestone gorge of the Arpa River near that village, archaeologists found a grape press and fermentation vessels that radiocarbon dating places around 4000 BC (UNESCO). Gor would want a stranger tasting it to come away knowing something about that grape and the country it comes from.
Gor is the first Armenian winemaker in the series. These are his answers to the twenty questions every winemaker in this series is asked, translated from Armenian.
1.Who taught you?
My path in winemaking began at the Armenian National Agrarian University, but I gained most of my professional knowledge through hands-on work. Garush Samvelyan is one of the people who guided me. During my years at Gevorkian Winery, often working around the clock, I learned the most important principles of winemaking: discipline, responsibility, and consistency.
I also gained a great deal of experience at the brandy factory, where I studied how different spirits are produced, from blending brandy and whisky to distilling and making vodka. At the same time I learned to manage the factory's production and coordinate the whole process, from receiving the raw materials and organizing production to quality control and preparing the finished product.
2.Who have you taught? Where are they now?
I have passed my experience on to the assistants, students, and interns who worked with me. Today I also consult for other wineries, helping them with their production and with creating their wines.
Passing on knowledge matters a great deal to me. When you can hand the experience you've gained over the years to someone else, it keeps living beyond your own work.
3.Which vintages do you date your life by?
I count my winemaking life from 2014. Since then, every harvest has become part of my professional history.
Some years I remember by wines that turned out better than expected, and others by the difficulties and decisions that made me more experienced. Every harvest reminds me that even after many years, nature and the grapes can still surprise you.
4.What has changed in the trade since you started that a new hire would walk right past?
When I started working in winemaking, we were still using equipment left over from Soviet times. In those years a lot had to be learned on the job, working with the conditions we had and trying to develop production step by step.
About fifteen years ago, winemaking in Armenia began to take off. I was part of those changes. I worked with the old equipment, saw its limits, and took part in modernizing production and bringing in new technology. A lot of things seem ordinary to new workers today, but they often can't picture the conditions we worked in, or how far we had to come for Armenian winemaking to reach the level it's at now.
5.Walk me through a day at the peak of harvest, hour by hour.
For me the whole harvest season, from start to finish, is very intense. I remember one day when we had to bring in Voskehat grapes we had bought from farmers. We started picking at 7 or 8 in the morning, but around 9 it started to rain, and it kept switching between rain and sun.
We were soaked through and kept working. The vineyards were about 300 kilometers from the winery. We got back to the winery late in the evening, and because of problems with the electricity and the pump, receiving the grapes went on until dawn.
6.What decision do you make that you cannot fully explain to somebody else?
For me, one of the most important decisions is knowing when to step in with a wine and when to leave it alone. That can't always be explained with numbers or lab analyses. Over years of experience you learn to understand the language of the grapes and the wine, to feel them changing, and to make the right decision at the right moment. I believe a winemaker shouldn't only work with wine. He should be able to talk with it the right way.
7.Tell me about a harvest that went wrong. Start at the beginning.
I remember a time we were making a rosé from Areni grapes. We were receiving the grapes at another winery and then trucking the must to our own winery. The whole process was quite complicated, and we went through a lot of difficulties to make that wine.
During fermentation another problem came up. The valve on the heating jacket had been left open, and the wine started to overheat. When I noticed, I cooled the wine right away and got the temperature back under control.
I had written down the whole process of making that wine, noting hour by hour what I was doing and how I was working with it. For several years afterward, the winery's owner kept calling me to ask how we had made it. In the end I gave him my notes so he could go back to what we had done.
Despite all the difficulties, the wine turned out very well and became one of the best Armenian rosés of that year.
8.Who is the legend around the winery? Somebody people tell stories about.
My path in winemaking may not be very long, but along the way I've been lucky to meet top professionals, and each of them passed important knowledge on to me.
From one I learned how to distill 96 percent spirit properly, and from another how to make the right blends of brandy spirits. From someone else I learned the art of making good wine, and from another how to work with lab data and understand what it means.
I wouldn't want to single anyone out or give names, because to me each of them is a true master in his field. If you ask me who the legends of winemaking are for me, my answer is simple. They're the people I learned the important secrets of my profession from.
9.Is there something that happens at the end of crush every year? Same thing, same way.
We don't have a special tradition at the end of crush. Usually we finish that stage of the work and move on to the next.
10.What do people outside the trade always get wrong about this work?
In Armenia, many people think grape juice "boils," turns into wine, and is ready to drink. When you explain that during fermentation the sugar turns into alcohol and the fruit aromas form naturally, they ask, "So you add fruit?"
Many people can't imagine how complicated it is to make good wine.
11.What's the first thing you got wrong, and who caught it?
There were mistakes, of course, and I still remember my first one. Nobody noticed it at the time, but I realized myself that it shouldn't have been done that way. Since I worked as head winemaker and was responsible for the whole process, it mattered to me not only to notice mistakes but to understand why they happened. Every mistake became experience for me, and I've always tried to learn from them and not repeat them.
12.Is there something you still do the way you were taught, even though you know a faster way exists?
Not really. Winemaking keeps developing, and I'm always ready to learn new methods and use whatever gives a better result. What matters to me isn't holding on to the old ways. It's understanding what's right for a particular wine.
13.What were you taught that you've since stopped doing?
I can't point to one thing in winemaking that I was taught and later gave up completely. Over the years my approach has changed and developed along with my experience, but that doesn't mean what I learned before was wrong.
14.Is there a tank or a piece of equipment around here that has a name?
Yes. Especially at the brandy factory where I worked, the tanks had their own names, like Rocket, Wagon, Dordor, and so on. Those names became so normal in the course of the work that we just called the tanks that.
15.Somebody walks in knowing nothing about wine. What do they already know that you can build on?
In my opinion, knowing the technology of making wine isn't enough to learn winemaking. You need to know math and chemistry, but you also need what we call in Armenian kt'i tsak, a hole in the nose. It's an Armenian saying, and here it means a fine sense and perception. That sense, together with knowledge and experience, helps you understand wine.
16.Whoever pours this wine for a stranger, what do they need to know that isn't in the tasting notes?
There are a lot of wines in the world today, and it's important that each one has its own story. In my opinion, the person serving the wine should know that story and be able to tell it to the customer. A wine should win people over not only with its taste and aroma, but with the story that makes it special.
17.What would someone have to watch you do to understand this wine?
I think the most important thing is attention. You have to pay attention to wine the same way you do to people, because both are living organisms. If someone saw how closely you follow the wine as it develops, how you notice small changes and respond to them, they would understand better how much that attention matters in making a wine.
18.What's your favorite wine that you don't make?
From time to time I try wines from different countries and different winemakers. For me it isn't about deciding which wine is better. It's about understanding the winemaker's handwriting. I pay particular attention to how a winemaker expresses his approach and his way of thinking through the wine. I'm interested in finding each winemaker's personality in the wine he made.
19.When you make a great one, do you know right away?
In my experience, you don't always recognize a good wine right away. A wine reveals itself over time, and sometimes something that seems ordinary at first turns out to be very interesting later. When a wine turns out the way I imagined it, that gives me great satisfaction. When the result doesn't meet my expectations, I try to understand why. For me every wine is an experience you can always learn something from.
20.One pour, one stranger. Which wine, and what do you say before they taste it?
I would choose my TAPI Areni. Before they tasted it I would say that this is a wine made from the Armenian Areni grape. While they tried it, I would want them not only to judge the wine but to get to know our grape and the culture of Armenian winemaking, which has more than 6,100 years of history.
For me it matters that wine is not just a drink, but a chance to discover the country it comes from.
Answered in writing, in Armenian, on November 2, 2026. Translated into English and edited lightly for length and clarity. Gor reviewed the translation before publication.
Patrick R. Dunn trained in narrative at the University of Maine under Stephen King and folklorist Edward "Sandy" Ives, and spent thirty years leading global crisis management and operational resilience teams across four continents, through 9/11, Katrina, and Sandy. He spent more than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger and is WSET Level 3 certified. Through his practice, Vianarra, he works with winery owners, boutique hotels, and restaurants on how they tell their story. He writes about wine and hospitality every week at newsletter.vianarra.com.