Varuzhan Mouradian: The Man Who Brought the Vines Back

Originally published by EVN Report at https://evnreport.com/lifestyle/salt-varouzhan-mouradian-the-man-who-brought-the-vines-back/

There is a bell tower at Van Ardi winery in Armenia’s Aragatsotn region, and Varuzhan Mouradian will tell you, matter-of-factly, as he tells you most things, that the bell’s reverberations cleanse the aura of the surrounding land. He built it himself. It overlooks Mount Ararat to the south, Mount Aragats to the west, and Mount Ara to the east. On a clear day, you can see all three at once. The wind carries the sound across the vineyard. The vines, for what it’s worth, are also listening to classical Armenian music. Speakers throughout the vineyard play Komitas, sharakans (hymns), and enchanting harp melodies, not as ambiance but as cultivation.

This is not the story of a mystic. Varuzhan Mouradian was an accountant.

He grew up in Soviet Armenia and studied at the Armenian State University of Economics, where he met his wife, Anahit. Most of his professional life in Armenia was spent in auditing, and he was working in Gyumri when the 1988 earthquake struck. His father was a head priest at Khor Virap, then Geghard, and contributed to the renovation of the road leading to Khor Virap. The family had roots in faith, in stone, and in permanence. Varuzhan inherited a version of that orientation, only his would manifest itself in terroir rather than theology.

The early 1990s in Armenia were brutal. The country was suffering from infrastructure collapse. Families burned furniture to stay warm, and bread lines stretched around city blocks. Homes, schools, and even hospitals endured constant power cuts. For Varuzhan and Anahit, these conditions were no place to raise a family, so they moved to Los Angeles.

His first job in LA was delivering pizzas. At the same, he was reaccrediting himself as an accountant, in a new country in a new language. He eventually landed an accounting job, then managed a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Never one to settle into comfort, he opened his own accounting firm in the early 2000s. Anahit worked alongside him. They had their first daughter, Ani. For what it was worth, life was good.

And then Napa Valley got to him. Or, as Ani says with a laugh, “The wine bee bit him, and there was no going back.”

He had always loved wine the way you love something you haven’t yet decided to take seriously, the way you love a subject before you realize it’s going to occupy your life. Before he relocated to California, he would travel to Armenian villages and try the homemade stuff: earthy and variable, and made with no particular theory.

But Napa was different. The wineries there were estates in the French and Italian tradition: generational, architectural, and rooted in the idea that wine isn’t so much a product as a place made drinkable. When Varuzhan visited, something in him would wake up.

He started reading. Then read more, and more. He took it a step further and enrolled in courses at UC Davis, one of the country’s top oenology programs. He did a test batch at home in LA with a make-your-own-wine kit and Ani, in third grade at the time, was in charge of stomping the grapes.

On a wedding anniversary, he told Anahit he was getting married again…to winemaking.

The question of where to do it wasn’t difficult. He deliberated between California, maybe Santa Barbara, and Armenia. It didn’t take long to decide. Armenia has everything a serious winemaker needs: altitude, volcanic soil, and the temperature swings between warm days and cold nights that concentrate flavor in the grape. It also has something California doesn’t: history.

Armenian wine was not a romantic notion Varuzhan had invented. Greek and Roman historians, namely Herodotus and Xenophon, documented Armenian wine being exported across the Roman Empire and Byzantium. The Kingdom of Van, the ancient Armenian kingdom located in what is now eastern Turkey, was producing wine when most of Europe was still figuring out fermentation.

It’s worth mentioning that his ancestors are from Van, so this was no coincidence.

Varuzhan took Ani to Armenia when she was nine. She didn’t know what the long drives were for. They would stop at empty plots of land, get out to look around, and get back in the car. She was too enchanted to ask, too mesmerized by the beauty of Mount Ararat through the windshield to understand that Varuzhan was looking at plots. “I wasn’t bothered enough to ask what they were doing because the whole trip was very exciting,” she says.

He eventually chose Sasunik, in the Aragatsotn region. The land was barren back then. Rocky and dry, and whatever greenery there was had been planted by human hands. Nobody doubted he could do it; they did, however, question the sanity of leaving a stable life in Los Angeles to build something in a country still recovering from decades of post-independence turbulence. People warned him about doing business in Armenia. The mafia, they said, would come for it once it was worth something. He found the opposite: almost everyone he met along the way was more than helpful.

He planted the first ten hectares of vines in 2008. The winery had been designed by an architect in California before he’d even bought the land, drawn to the standards of quality winemaking that Armenia largely lacked at the time. Now, Van Ardi has around 18 hectares of vines. Its altitude helps, too. “They have a high altitude, 1050 meters, which is considered high in the wine world, a key selling point. The highest altitudes in Europe are 700 to 800 meters,” Mouradian says. The constant winds, sometimes a nuisance for visitors, functions as natural ventilation. The result: healthier vines.

A quick rewind to the Soviet era: Armenia had been turned into a vodka nation. Even after the collapse, wineries operated like factories. Grapes were bought from farmers who watered them as much as possible. Heavier grapes meant more money, and the resulting wine was sweetened for the Russian palate. The idea of a winery with its own vineyard, growing grapes specifically for wine, was uncommon. The focus was quantity, not quality.

Van Ardi began producing in 2013—15,000 bottles in the first year. Within four years, the winery reached 100,000 bottles annually. This was the bare minimum of what Varuzhan had in mind. He began exporting in the second year. Today, Van Ardi reaches 12 countries and 50% to 60% of the wine is consumed in Armenia, which as he’ll tell you, is one of the main goals: to rebuild a culture of wine in Armenia, where some of the earliest known winemaking happened.

Van Ardi’s practices had a contagious effect. The Aragatsotn region, once not known for wine at all, is now one of Armenia’s primary winemaking regions. Other producers watched and adapted. It’s safe to say that one winery helped turn a region around.

The experimentation hasn’t stopped. Varuzhan was the first to plant Areni grapes, Armenia’s most celebrated indigenous variety, in Aragatsotn. People said it wouldn’t work there. For him, that was an invitation to try, and the grapes thrived. Van Ardi also grows Syrah, the only non-Armenian variety on the property, and produced the region’s first 100% Armenian Syrah from volcanic soils.

Then there are the basalt vats. Inspired by a 5,000-year-old complex of basalt winemaking vessels discovered in the village of Akarak near Sasunik, Varuzhan commissioned local artisans to create basalt vats for Van Ardi. Today, he is aging wine in them as part of his latest experiment, drawing on ancient techniques to explore new possibilities. To the best of current knowledge, no other winery in the world is aging wine in handcrafted basalt vats on this scale.

He still manages sales, accounting, exports, viticulture, construction, and winemaking. His family, gently but persistently, urges him to charge more for the wines. He refuses. He wants good wine to be accessible. Meanwhile, Anahit runs the kitchen and tourism, and the plates she sends out are always full. “Mom, you’re putting too much on the plates,” Ani would tell her. The plates remain full.

There is a principle in winemaking: the best grapes come from stressed vines, planted in poor soil, not overwatered, left to search. Stressed vines produce smaller, more concentrated fruit. The struggle is part of the secret recipe.

Varuzhan Mouradian audited accounts in a country falling apart. He delivered pizzas in Los Angeles. He drove across barren land with his nine-year-old daughter and imagined vines. He planted grapes in volcanic rock and built a winery that didn’t yet have a country to belong to or a wine culture to exist within, and helped build that, too. But he’s not done yet, like a vine that is ready to extend its arms in new directions.

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