By L.M. Archer
Father and daughter winemakers Vahe and Aimee Keushguerian claim fame for making what has been called “the world’s most dangerous wine” at their winery, Keush. The James Beard award-winning 2024 film Cup of Salvation chronicles their quest to make a taboo wine from secret Iranian vineyards. But this isn’t the Keushguerians’ first brush with danger. They also survived harvest during a war with neighboring Azerbaijan in 2020–all while spearheading Armenia’s ongoing wine revolution.
For some context, Armenia’s wine culture dates back millennia. According to legend, Noah (of large wooden ark fame) planted vines on nearby Mt. Ararat, post-flood. More recently, archeologists discovered a winery cave dating back to circa 4,000 BCE. During World War I, genocide drove an Armenian diaspora abroad. Post-World War I, Soviets then ruled Armenia, dictating brandy, not wine production. However, after the Soviet collapse in the 1990s, many diasporan Armenians returned to reclaim their homeland, their culture and their winemaking.
Among them was Vahe Keushguerian. An Armenian born in Syria and raised in Lebanon, Keushguerian later lived and made wine in Italy and the United States before visiting Armenia for the first time in 1997. After moving to Armenia permanently in the late 2000s, daughter Aimee joined him in 2015. Together, the Keushguerians’ efforts include founding Armenia’s first sparkling wine house, a wine startup incubator, a wine academy, a nursery for native grape varieties and a digital food and wine magazine. We sat down with this dynamic duo to discover what’s driving them to jumpstart Armenia’s modern wine industry.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
L.M. Archer: Firstly, how has the movie (Cup of Salvation) impacted Armenian wine?
Vahe Keushguerian: Overall, it was a good entrance for people to get to know Armenia as a winemaking country in general.
Aimee Keushguerian: I think it’ll act a little bit like [a] ripple effect, where it had an immediate effect of awareness of Armenian wine and Iranian wine, and then slowly because it’s released on Apple TV and some major streaming publications. Now the documentary is out there and will be forever on some of these platforms. So it’ll [continue] to be watched and continue to be followed.
L.M. Archer: Vahe, what made you want to move to Armenia to make wine?
Vahe Keushguerian: In 1997, I decided to make wine [in Armenia]. I planted vineyards in 1999, but I never made wine. The vineyards still exist. But I didn’t make wine for various reasons—personal, financial, the state of the wine industry. I was very early. The real action started in 2006 to 2007, when a couple of people planted new vineyards. So then, fast forward to 2009. By chance, I made some wine from existing vineyards, and that kind of caught on fire. And then I decided to stay. So it wasn’t intentional, let’s put it that way.
Aimee Keushguerian: I just finished studying economic development and social entrepreneurship in college, and Vahe invited me for my first harvest at Keush in 2015. I never thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps, but when I came for harvest, I think a lot of things hit me at once. I’m a diasporan Armenian, so there is this broad notion of Armenians having this emotional draw toward rebuilding our nation post-Soviet Union. Secondly, was the potential and the opportunity to be a part of rebuilding a wine industry. And we’re rebuilding it. We’re not building it from scratch. We have a lot of ancient history, and we have history during the Soviet time, so being part of something that was being rebuilt, I think, was really exciting. It was a challenge.
L.M. Archer: Vahe, you founded wine incubator WineWorks and Keush sparkling wine in 2013. You’ve impacted a lot of Armenian winemakers at WineWorks, including international winemaker Paul Hobbs, correct?
Vahe Keushguerian: In 2014, I had two projects … and one of them was Yacoubian-Hobbs, with Paul Hobbs and the Jacoubian brothers. And another project, which is very well known now, the Koor project. And then I think three years later, we did Zulal, and Oshin five years later. And subsequent years, we incubated around 24 projects. Some have left, or graduated, if you will. They went and built their own wineries. Some stayed with me, and now we have around eight projects, and most of them are very well known brands in Armenia. NOA is one of them, and then Tus is another one up north.
L.M. Archer: Aimee, what exactly does WineWorks do?
Aimee Keushguerian: WineWorks is a winery incubator [and] custom crush facility, but it’s also responsible for creating a lot of infrastructure, so we also represent equipment suppliers like Diam, Bucher Vaslin and Enoveneta. We have two nurseries, where we propagate and plant and provide new plants for the industry. WineWorks also is a co-founder of the EVN Wine Academy, which was founded in 2015. So it’s been instrumental in a lot [more] ways in the industry, I would say, than just being a winery incubator and custom crush. And for that, a lot of people would credit it for speeding up certain infrastructure for the industry to be able to grow so quickly.
L.M. Archer: Vahe, can you briefly touch on the success of EVN Wine Academy?
Vahe Keushguerian: I started EVN Wine Academy in 2015. [By] this series, the tenth anniversary, we’ve graduated around 18 to 20 students per year. Overall, there’s probably 120 graduates, working in wineries, doing either sales or production, etc.
L.M. Archer: Aimee, the remote village of Khachik, which grows the grapes for Keush sparkling wine, overlooks the borders of neighboring Turkey, Iran, Georgia and Azerbaijan. It also lies in direct fire between two army bases (Armenia and Azerbaijan). In 2020, Azerbaijan started a six-week war against Armenia, right before harvest. You managed the Keush harvest at that time. What was it like getting caught up in the conflict?
Aimee Keushguerian: The vineyards sit in between the two military bases, and they were planted 120 years ago, before the Soviet Union, before the two military bases were built on either side of the vineyard, so they act like our border, and when we’re in the vineyards, we’re standing in direct sniper range and in firing range of the Azeri soldiers. Khachik sits higher up on the hill (~1750 m./5741 ft.), so we have a [vantage] point. In terms of safety and conflict, that side of the border has been relatively really calm because it’s a disadvantage to attack from that side of the region.
But during harvest, it took us three and a half weeks to harvest instead of our usual one week. We had to come up with a plan with all the grape growers and the village mayor to harvest two by two, very slowly, at night time, to not make a lot of movement and chaos and noise, to [not] cause any commotion during the war when it was happening. So it was definitely a particular vintage. We managed to harvest the grapes that year, which was a big feat.
L.M. Archer: Aimee, what inspired you to found your own project, Zulal?
Aimee Keushguerian: I think the industry was making a lot of Arani and Voskahat [two native Armenian grape varieties]. (Areni has become our flagship [red] grape variety, and Voskahat for our white grape.) I champion Areni and Voskehat all day—I think they’re the most complex and noble grapes that we have, but we have this breadth of other indigenous grapes that no one was making single varietal wines from before, and that really struck my interest. With Zulal wines, the idea was to experiment with all these rare, almost lost and forgotten grape varieties.
L.M. Archer: Aimee, you also founded Origins digital food and wine magazine in 2018. How has the Armenian food and wine scene evolved since then?
Aimee Keushguerian: Origins was a magazine we founded to highlight the untold stories of Armenian wine. The industry is growing really, really quickly. The industry has a lot of moving pieces, and with that, the food industry is exploding as well. We have Armenians from all [over] the world that are coming and opening up restaurants in Yerevan [Armenia’s capital city]. The level of food and service and hospitality has increased significantly, and we credit a lot of that to being spearheaded from wine, because Armenia started producing good wine.
Since 2012, when the first wine bar [opened], until now, when you walk down the streets in Yerevan, it feels like a bustling city, full of fine dining restaurants and wine bars. So the food and wine culture has grown intertwined with one another, although a lot of people credit wine for spurring this food revolution as well.
L.M. Archer: Finally, what makes Armenian wines so surprising to consumers?
Aimee Keushguerian: Besides having a completely unique terroir from anywhere else in the world, the stories of how Armenians became, and have always been, winemakers is enchanting. The taste of the wine is very different. It’s a completely different product from anywhere else in the world. You can’t make Armenian wine anywhere else—you don’t find these grapes anywhere else in the world. They’re very unique to this, to our territory.
Vahe Keushguerian: I think a lot of people might emphasize the history of winemaking. But what sets Armenian wine apart is a different narrative. I think the history is there to prove that Armenia can make great wines, or potentially can make great wines, because anything you’ve been at for 11,000 years, generation to generation to millennia, it means it has [been] purified and crystallized. It means the grape varieties that over this period have been selected and reselected, and the ones we inherit, around 200 or 300 of them, it’s because they have stood the test of time.,
So now add to that high elevation plateau, which is not unusual, but for the northern hemisphere, it is quite unusual. In the northern hemisphere, maybe 800 meters (2,625 feet) would be the limit in Europe. Here, we go from 1,000 meters (3281 feet) to 1,800 meters (5,906 feet). In the southern hemisphere, [there are higher elevations] in Chile, Argentina, but in the northern hemisphere, it’s quite rare to have high elevation. And high elevation, it’s pretty, but it also makes different quality grapes, because now you have higher phenol levels. The polyphenols in the grapes, sea level, and the mountains are all a very different game. So viticulture is of another level, another quality.
Then add to that volcanic soil, which is very well drained, so all of a sudden, now we have a root system. So if you put these three together, volcanic soil, high elevation viticulture, and indigenous Armenian grapes, now you have a unique product. So that’s what sets Armenia apart.
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