Armenian brandy: the Johnnie Walker Black Label of the East
Armenian brandy was the "golden currency" of the Soviet empire and is still worth drinking today.
Armenian brandy was the Johnnie Walker Black Label of the USSR. If you wanted to smooth a transaction in Minsk, Smolensk or Vladivostock, then a bottle of konyak to the right man would usually do the trick. The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam referred to it as “the golden currency of cognac”.
The Soviets had a parallel booze economy to the Western one: port and madeira-style wines were made at Massandra in Crimea, sturdy reds came from Georgia, Champanski from Moldova and, of course, Tokay from Hungary. Today Tokay has been revitalised and the Georgians are exporting to America but poor landlocked Armenia, trapped between enemies, Turks and Azeris, has little choice but to stay within the Russian sphere of influence. Unfortunately,the Russians proved poor allies in the recent war with Azerbaijan over the disputed provinces of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians, however, are nothing if not resourceful when it comes to their export markets: by the side of the road in Vayots Dzor province, you’ll see what looks like Coca Cola for sale; the bottles are actually filled with wine ready to be smuggled into the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It’s a mark of how bitterly the Armenians feel towards the Turks, that the Bolshevik occupation from 1920 to 1991 isn’t remembered too badly. In fact, they encouraged some aspects of local culture. I’d never quite understood this side of Soviet rule until I read something on Ed West’s Substack where he quotes from a book called Affirmative Action Empire by Terry Martin:
‘Russia’s new revolutionary government was the first of the old European multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism and respond by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the characteristic institutional forms of the nation-state.’
He continues: ‘The Soviet state financed the mass production of books, journals, newspapers, movies, operas, museums, folk music ensembles, and other cultural output in the non-Russian languages.’
When the Soviet empire collapsed, all the nationalist feeling that had been so carefully cultivated erupted with consequences that are still being played out today. This was apparent in the attitude of our guide to a museum in the capital, Yerevan, devoted to Armenia’s rich written language full of priceless books with a statute of the inventor of the country’s unique alphabet, Mesrod Mashtots, outside. She spent most of the tour comparing the rich culture of her native country with that of the ‘nomads’ in Azerbaijan. This kind of raw patriotic pride was startling to someone brought up in the peace and prosperity of Britain but then my country wasn’t at war.
The collection is housed in a building that takes its cues from traditional Armenian churches. Yerevan has many fine Soviet-era buildings that take their they certainly look better than the kind of Dubai-lite architecture that is now springing up all over the city.
Two of these such buildings house the rival Ararat and Noy (Noy means Noah in Armenian and Mount Ararat was where Noah was said to have landed after the flood) distilleries. The former, housed in a redbrick building somewhat reminiscent of a monastery, is described in Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook (published in 1965) as “the distillery on a hill with a clear view of Mount Ararat”. The mountain, symbol of Armenia, towers over the city, but it’s now in Turkey.
Both distilleries claim descent from the original Armenian brandy which was largely a creation of a Russian, Nikolay Shustov. So esteemed was Shustov brandy that at the International Exhibition in Paris of 1900, his firm won the right to call its product ‘cognac’. During Soviet times, Armenian brandy was a great favourite of the Politburo. Churchill was said to have drunk it but then again Churchill was said to have drunk everything: no leader except perhaps Napoleon has done more to shift booze.
Armenian brandy is double-distilled like cognac but from local grapes and aged in Caucasian oak. The cheaper ones are sweet and mellow, a small amount of sugar is added post-distillation, but the Ararat Nairi 20 year old can bear comparison with a good armagnac or cognac. The locals drink it rather as you would a dessert wine with coffee and chocolates. No meal in Armenia is complete until the bottle of cognac is on the table.
Vasily Grossman wrote “cognac may be a French word but Armenian cognac is the best in the world; no grapes are as sweet as Armenian grapes. . .” Hyperbole certainly but there’s little doubt that even under Communism, it was a fine product. It’s a better made product today though. Following independence in 1991, investors flocked in and cellars were modernised. Pernod-Ricard now own the Ararat brand, but it’s still little seen outside its traditional market. On the tour I was the only visitor from outside the old empire. In a move the smacks of desperation, one distillery has taken to selling its brandy in novelty bottles in the shape of AK-47s and, oddly, penises. You can’t imagine them doing that in Cognac.
Back at the Ararat distillery they have 19th century bottles on display which I was hoping they open for the very important English visitor. Sadly they didn’t. There’s also the so-called ‘peace barrel’ which was filled in 2001 and will be opened when the Nagorno-Karabakh has been resolved - presumably in Armenia’s favour. It looks like we won’t we able to taste it for a very long time.
A shorter and rather different version of this article appeared in The Tonic Magazine.