The Climate Is Changing, How Are Armenian Winemakers Adapting?

Listen to the author’s reading of the article. 

Over the past two decades, Armenia has experienced what many describe as a winemaking renaissance, reviving a viticultural heritage that dates back more than six millennia.

One of the most ancient producers of wine, Armenia is home to the world’s oldest known winery, the Areni-1 cave in Vayots Dzor. But under the Soviet Union, Armenia was designated a brandy producer, and wine production nearly stopped. After the collapse of the USSR, there was renewed interest in Armenia’s winemaking history. 

Since the 2000s, dozens of new wineries have opened all over the country, combining modern technology and ancient techniques to produce high-quality wines that increasingly win international recognition. In 2024 alone, Armenia produced 10 million liters of wine and Yerevan’s trendy Saryan Street is now dotted with wine bars.

But a changing global climate may force Armenia’s burgeoning wine industry to adapt. Winemakers around the world, including in Armenia, have begun to take note of how changing temperatures and rainfall patterns affect the annual grape harvest.

Gabriel Rogel, the winemaker at Karas Wines in Armavir, moved to Armenia from his native Argentina more than a decade ago. In that time, he says he’s noticed hotter summers, milder winters and less rainfall. Rogel says the beginning of the harvest season at Karas now varies by as much as a few weeks from year to year. He and his team are experimenting with new irrigation methods to cope with the changing climate.

Over the past century, Armenia’s average temperature has risen by more than 1°C, while average recorded rainfall has dropped by 10%, according to numbers published by the European Union-funded project EU4Climate. The World Bank reports that Armenia is “highly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change.”

“This is why we need to take all the measures to understand what will happen with viticulture and winemaking in Armenia,” says Kristina Margaryan, a scientist who leads a team conducting genetic research on Armenian grapes. “We need to be prepared for these climate changes.”

Winemakers Adopt Diverse Climate Change Solutions

Some winemakers in Armenia are proactively seeking ways to deal with climate change. Maran Winery, for instance, has begun experimenting with growing grapes at higher elevations. 

Margaryan believes moving vineyards to higher altitudes may become common as the climate warms. She’s part of a team working on an experimental high-altitude vineyard to better understand how grapes perform at different elevations. Margaryan’s research team is also working to identify lesser-known or neglected grape varieties in Armenia, some of which may be more resilient to disease, drought or rising temperatures. Her team conducts fieldwork across Armenia, searching for these varieties in the wild and in small village orchards. 

Hans Binder, a German scientist who leads a lab studying grapevine genomics at the Armenian Institute of Bioinformatics, says Armenia’s mountainous terrain could work to the advantage of winemakers as the climate changes. “Armenia is in a relatively good position,” Binder says, because winemakers here would be more able to move their vineyards to higher elevations to escape rising temperatures. This is not necessarily the case in winemaking regions with flatter topographies.

Another way some winemakers are adapting is by experimenting with new methods of irrigation in their vineyards. Many wineries in Armenia already irrigate their vineyards because of the region’s dry climate, especially in the summer months. Irrigation can make vineyards more drought-resistant because it means growers don’t have to rely on regular rainfall to water their vines. But Greg Jones, an American climate scientist and winemaker, notes, “the water’s got to come from somewhere.” If drought conditions deplete the reservoirs growers use for irrigation, they won’t be able to water their vines. At Karas, Rogel is experimenting with less frequent irrigation for longer periods, which allows the vines to better absorb the water.

Others have taken more of a wait-and-see approach. “You can’t calculate everything,” says Varuzhan Mouradian, the founder of Van Ardi in the Aragatsotn region, when asked how he expects climate change to affect his operation. He says he’ll continue to stay optimistic and adjust as challenges arise.

Growers Report Shifting Harvests and Milder Winters 

Rogel says the 2024 harvest at Karas began notably early, on August 8. This year, it didn’t begin until the end of August, a variation of about 20 days. Shifting grape harvests are a global phenomenon. Harvests around the world now occur two to three weeks earlier on average than they did 50 years ago. 

“Harvests are much earlier than they used to be,” Jones says. “The plants are telling us that something is happening.”

Temperature conditions can affect wine quality and flavor, Jones explains. For instance, too much sun exposure can cause grapes to develop excess sugar, resulting in overly sweet wines with higher alcohol content. When temperatures consistently exceed 40°C, vines begin to “shut down” and enter “survival mode,” Mouradian says. To combat heat stress, both Rogel and Mouradian use their vine leaves to shade the grapes. Growers can also use canopies or shade cloths to protect their vines from the sun, Jones explains. 

Warmer conditions can also allow diseases and parasites to proliferate in vineyards, says Margaryan, whose research investigates the genetic factors that make some grape varieties more resistant to these pathogens.

Cold conditions––especially when they come unseasonably late––can harm a vineyard’s harvest. But this has been less of a concern in Armenia recently, as winters have grown milder on average. Mouradian says these milder conditions may actually benefit winemakers by reducing the risk of losing grapes to a late frost. The Aragatsotn region typically experiences cold winters, so winemakers like Mouradian often bury vines in the ground to protect them from low temperatures. But this may change as winters become less harsh.

Mikayel Mikayelyan, the head of EVN Wine Academy’s wine lab, says some winemakers in the region have stopped burying their vines. This can save growers money because this process is time- and labor-intensive. But leaving vines unburied means one cold snap can be devastating, Mikayelyan notes.

Lack of Information, Lack of Awareness

Aramayis Mkrtchyan, head of the winemaking and viticulture department at the Vine and Wine Foundation of Armenia, says climate change is not a chief concern for most growers he talks to. In Armenia, there is little awareness or information about how climate change can affect winemaking, he adds. There isn’t yet enough data to definitively say how the changing climate is affecting the wine industry.

Binder, the German scientist, says wine science is an “understudied” field in Armenia, but he hopes in the future, scientists and winemakers in the country will collaborate more.

“We lack the information,” says Mariam Saghatelyan, co-founder of the Yerevan wine bar In Vino, adding that many Armenian winemakers take things “year-by-year” and don’t always consider how climate change could affect their vineyards. She attributed this in part to years of instability and war in Armenia, which have made it difficult for some winemakers to think far into the future. “Hopefully we’ll be able to look more forward in the future,” Saghatelyan says.

But Armenian winemakers aren’t alone in failing to take decisive action to adapt to climate change. Despite marked changes in the winemaking industry over the past 50 years, Jones, the American climate scientist and winemaker, says “there’s still a disconnect” for winemakers around the world.

“You’re doing what you’re doing, and you have to make it work over the short term,” Jones says. “People don’t plan for long term kinds of things very well.”

Studying climate change’s effects on winemaking has been mainstream for decades. Jones was among the first to start researching the subject around 25 years ago, though his research has primarily focused on American and Western European vineyards. In fact, he says Armenia is one of the few winemaking regions in the world he has not yet visited. Armenia’s relatively small winemaking scene hasn’t been the subject of nearly as much research as France’s or Italy’s. But in recent years, a growing number of scientists have started to take an interest. 

Margaryan, Binder and other scientists are part of a community researching viticulture in Armenia. Several scholars at Yerevan State University have conducted research about Armenian grapes and winemaking. Binder’s lab at the Armenian Bioinformatics Institute has collaborated with scientists in Armenia and abroad in its genetic research on Armenian grapevines, and Margaryan will soon publish a book of Armenian grape varieties. 

Armenian Grape Varieties Pose Challenges and Opportunities 

When Mouradian first began planting vines on the plot of land that would become Van Ardi, he says he struggled to find information about the grape varieties he wanted to grow. He wanted to plant varieties indigenous to Armenia—varieties grown almost nowhere else. Compared to typical varieties grown around the world, like Chardonnay or Merlot, there was little information online about these niche Armenian grapes. So Mouradian went to the agricultural university for advice.

“The agricultural university gave me a Xerox copy of a handwritten thing,” he says, “and that’s all the information you could find.” After almost 20 years and plenty of trial and error, Mouradian has a thriving vineyard where he grows mainly Armenian grape varieties, like Areni, Milagh, Kangun and Voskehat.

Jones says the limited information about grape varieties indigenous to Armenia may create challenges for winemakers as the climate changes. For more common varieties, there’s a better understanding of how those grapes perform under a wide range of conditions. “But in Armenia, some of the varieties there are not known anywhere outside of Armenia,” Jones says. “They’re just not well-known enough to give us really a very confident idea of how they can perform.”

Rogel says working with Armenian native varieties was “totally new” for him when he arrived in Armenia. Learning to grow varieties like Areni and Voskehat required years of research and experimentation. Now Karas grows a mix of international and Armenian native varieties, he says.

Mikayelyan says there are hundreds of unique varieties of grape native to Armenia, many of which are barely known in Armenia, much less abroad. Not all of these varieties are used for winemaking. But the diversity of Armenian grapes could be good news for winemakers as the climate changes, Mikayelyan says. 

“The key to solving the problem is preserving your biodiversity. If you have 10 varieties, there is less chance you will overcome problems related to climate change. If you have preserved 200, there is a much greater chance that you will survive,” says Margaryan, the scientist who has done fieldwork identifying and sequencing the genomes of Armenian grapes.

Binder calls the large number of grape varieties that grow in Armenia a “hidden treasure.” He says Armenia has more biodiversity when it comes to winemaking grapes than many famous winemaking regions in Western Europe. Margaryan says this biodiversity could make the Armenian wine industry more resilient to climate change. So far, she has analyzed the genetic makeup of more than 3,000 samples. Her team has documented numerous varieties that display what she calls “interesting behavior,” like pathogen resistance.

After identifying these characteristics, her team can cross-breed or use gene editing technology to create versions of better-known Armenian grape varieties, like Areni, that also have these more resilient traits. 

“We have this treasure, because there are so many different, absolutely unique genotypes,” Margaryan says. “We have all the possibilities to work and to discover the new behavior we need to control.”

Also see

Environment

Podcast