Areni is a name that rings a bell for anyone who loves wine. This village in southern Armenia, on the banks of the Arpa River, is the country's wine heartland and, according to archaeology, the cradle of the world's wine: in the Areni-1 cave, a short walk from the village, the oldest known winery was discovered, with a wine press and fermentation vats from some 6.100 years ago. The same site also yielded the oldest leather shoe on the planet. Here, wine isn't a trend: it's a tradition more than six millennia old.
Today Areni still lives off wine. Its vineyards grow the native red grape that bears its name, the basis of the finest Armenian reds, and in and around the village there are family-run and modern wineries where you can taste, eat and buy directly from the producer. Every first weekend of October, the Areni Wine Festival turns the village into a party with hundreds of wines, music and dance. And to top it off, a few kilometres away awaits one of the most beautiful monasteries in the country, Noravank, in its red-rock canyon.
This guide helps you make the most of Areni wisely: how to get there from Yerevan, which wineries to visit and how much a tasting costs, what the visit to the Areni-1 cave and its ancient history is like, when the wine festival takes place, and how to combine the village with Noravank and Khor Virap for a perfect day out. It's the stop where the oldest history of wine meets the spectacular landscape of southern Armenia.
Areni is an ancient village in the Arpa valley whose modern fame grew out of an extraordinary discovery: from 2007 onwards, excavations in the nearby Areni-1 cave brought to light the oldest known winery in the world —a wine press, fermentation vats and grape seeds from some 6.100 years ago (c. 4100 BC)— and, shortly afterwards, the oldest leather shoe on the planet, about 5.500 years old. These finds confirmed that the region is one of the cradles of world viticulture, consistent with a winemaking tradition that has never been interrupted. The village itself is also home to the church of Surb Astvatsatsin (Holy Mother of God), from 1321, the work of the great architect and sculptor Momik, the same artist behind Noravank. Today Areni is synonymous with Armenian wine and hosts a renowned annual festival. That age-old history of wine and stone is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Armenia's deep south: Noravank Monastery between walls of red rock, Areni and the oldest winery in the world, the mountain spa town of Jermuk, and the great Tatev Monastery, reached by the longest non-stop cable car on the planet.
Read the history of The south: Vayots Dzor and Syunik →They depart from Erevan, 78 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In 2007, a team of archaeologists digging in a cave on the banks of the Arpa River, near the Armenian village of Areni, found something that would change the history books. Under layers of earth and sheep dung lay a complete winemaking installation: a clay vat where grapes were trodden, a container to collect the must, grape seeds, skins and vine shoots, presses and jars. The dating was astonishing: about 6,100 years old, from around 4100 BC. It was, and still is, the oldest known winery in the world.
The cave, called Areni-1 or the 'Birds' Cave', still had surprises in store. A year later, in 2008, a leather shoe turned up in its sediments. It was made from a single piece of leather, stitched, laced and perfectly preserved. At around 5,500 years old, it is the oldest leather footwear ever found, and it is now on display at the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan. The dry cave and its layers of dung created a microclimate that preserved organic materials that would have rotted away almost anywhere else.
All at once, this corner of southern Armenia became a landmark of world prehistory: the recognised birthplace of winemaking, the place where someone was already pressing grapes to make wine more than six thousand years ago.
The Areni-1 find was not a one-off accident. It confirmed something that geography and tradition already hinted at. The Caucasus region and the highlands of Armenia, Georgia and Iran are among the places where the wild grapevine (Vitis vinifera) was first domesticated, thousands of years ago. In these mountains, wine is not an imported fashion: it has been part of the cultural landscape since the dawn of farming.
What makes Areni-1 exceptional is that it shows wine not only as a drink but as a technology and a ritual practice that was already well developed in the Chalcolithic. The winery sat in a cave that also held burials and ritual objects, which suggests that winemaking had a ceremonial or funerary side. Drinking wine, and offering it to the dead or to the gods, was part of a complex culture 6,000 years ago.
That continuity is remarkable: in the same valleys where those prehistoric vats were found, people still grow vines and make wine today. The native red Areni grape, which gives its name to both the village and the variety, grows in hardy high-altitude vineyards with very old roots, and it is the basis of the best Armenian reds. Few places in the world can boast a wine tradition so long and so unbroken.
Areni is not just archaeology and vineyards. It is also a village with medieval roots, tied to the golden age of southern Armenia in the 13th and 14th centuries. At that time the regions of Vayots Dzor and Syunik were ruled by the powerful Orbelian dynasty of princes. Under Mongol overlordship they kept considerable autonomy and sponsored a great cultural flowering, whose finest monument is the nearby monastery of Noravank.
On a hill above the village stands Areni's Surb Astvatsatsin church (the Holy Mother of God), built in 1321. It was the work of Momik, the architect, sculptor and miniaturist who left his best work at Noravank and who is one of the great names of medieval Armenian art. Commissioned by Bishop Hovhannes Orbel, the church is an elegant, restrained example of the style of the period. It links Areni directly to the same dynasty and the same artistic genius that made the monastery in the neighbouring canyon famous.
So Areni's history unfolds in layers: the prehistory of wine in the cave, the Middle Ages of the Orbelians and Momik in the hilltop church, and the winemaking tradition that runs through both eras. It is a small village with an unusual density of history.
For much of the 20th century, under the Soviet Union (Armenia was a Soviet republic from 1920-1922 to 1991), the region's winemaking tradition took a back seat. Soviet farming policy assigned Armenia to produce cognac and brandy, which became famous across the Eastern Bloc, along with table grapes and bulk wine rather than quality bottled wine. Vineyards of native varieties such as Areni survived, but the country's winemaking potential lay dormant.
The revival came after independence, and above all in the last two decades. A new generation of wineries set out to rescue native varieties, modernise winemaking and put Armenian wine on the international map. Many were founded or revived by diaspora Armenians and local producers. In Areni and the surrounding area, projects such as Trinity Canyon Vineyards, Old Bridge, Hin Areni and others appeared and began winning awards and recognition. At the same time, the discovery of the Areni-1 winery gave that revival a powerful story: the world's oldest wine flourishing again in its homeland.
Today wine tourism is one of the great draws of southern Armenia, and Areni is at its heart. Wineries open their doors for tastings, roadside stalls sell homemade wine and churchkhela, and every first weekend of October the Areni Wine Festival turns the village into a huge party.
Today's Areni lives off this double identity: a world-famous prehistoric site and the capital of Armenian wine. Travellers arrive on the M2 highway from Yerevan. They stop at the Areni-1 cave to glimpse the origins of wine, taste Areni-grape reds at the wineries and buy homemade wine and churchkhela at the roadside stalls. Then they carry on to the monastery of Noravank, tucked into its red-rock canyon a few kilometres away. In a single day you travel through six thousand years of wine and art history.
That contrast is the essence of Areni. In very few places in the world can you see the oldest known winemaking installation and, a few hours later, raise a glass of wine made from a grape of the same land, with roots just as old. The tradition never broke: empires, borders and techniques changed, but the vines kept growing in these valleys and people kept making wine.
On its modest scale as a village in the south, Areni sums up something deep in Armenian identity: the stubborn continuity of an ancient culture despite every storm of history. Here, between the cave and the glass, you can touch that very long memory. And you can taste it, too.
