Irjevan Wine - Brandy factory Armenia

Guilty as charged.
All summer long I've been travelling, experiencing and tasting amazing wines and some rather less amazing. I've become lazy about blogging. If you want to catch up before I do, you'll find many photos and summaries on our Facebook page, twitter and Instagram.

Today required a blog.
90 minutes after setting foot in Armenia for the first time, we were in a brandy factory.

The tour round what looked like a fairly functional Soviet style fortress from the outside showed us highly automated production along with some quaint touches.
There was a nice tasting room with salty cheese for the wine, & chocolate for the brandy tasting. We are no experts but both felt the 7 & 20 year old Brandy we tasted was excellent. The red and white wines were both interesting blends of local grapes we had never before tasted.
They told us there are around 320 indigenous grape varieties.

I'm pretty sure the cherry or tea rose wines will not be making it to the UK market any time soon, but apparently these semi-sweet flavoured wines are big in China and Russia.
The cease and desist order on calling things cognac and champagne is in play... we were told they had till 2020 and they seemed to plan on using every last day.
Interesting, but not a patch on the Georgian wine we had come from. More on that later. Maybe!
Cheers.