The war was a couple of miles away. As drones buzzed and missiles screamed over the vineyard in the 1,200-year-old village of Togh, winemaker Andranik Manvelyan had only one thought: He needed to make sure his grapes were ready for harvest.
It was October 2020, and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War had just erupted. “We were working under shells and bombs. When I think about it now, it’s absurd. How could I stay there?” Manvelyan recalls, shaking his head. “All you could see were explosions. It was like the movie The Terminator.” Then, as if to lighten the weight of his words, he laughs.
I glance at his boss, Grigori Avetissyan, who’s holding a tulip glass between calloused hands, a knowing grin breaking on his face. Avetissyan is the founder of Kataro, the winery that put Nagorno-Karabakh—the 1,700-square-mile region Armenians call Artsakh—on the map. Since 2019, Manvelyan has been his right-hand man.
Barely a year ago, Avetissyan had everything to lose: his grapes, his livelihood, his homeland. Giving up was never an option. After Azerbaijan seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, Avetissyan bribed Russian peacekeepers to access his nursery in the occupied village of Hadrut. There, he gathered 1,000 khndoghni grapevines—the indigenous grape that grows almost exclusively in the region and earned Kataro its reputation for excellence—and smuggled them to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, using the peacekeepers’ trucks.
“Did I give them money? The Russians took one look at my beautiful eyes and let me right in,” says Avetissyan, and Manvelyan laughs so hard I fear he might choke on his rosé.
“You’re going to think, These people are crazy. We’re talking about a very sad topic, and they’re laughing,” Avetissyan says.
When you can’t imagine anything but pressing forward, what else can you do?
“Laughter helps you to survive,” Manvelyan says.
In the modern wine renaissance, reviving forgotten grapes has become an act of reclamation. From Croatia’s tribidrag to Catalonia’s querol, winemakers worldwide have increasingly replanted ancient varieties in a conscious effort to restore histories, traditions and terroirs. Few, however, have faced stakes as high as Avetissyan and Manvelyan.
Avetissyan founded Kataro in 2010. The label catapulted khndoghni grapes—which are deep blue and yield a velvety red wine with dark berry notes—into the winemaking lexicon. But khndoghni isn’t just any wine. It is Artsakh’s wine. And no one makes it better than Kataro.
“When we’re talking about Armenian wine, if you say Artsakh, we understand you mean Kataro. If you say Kataro, we understand you mean Artsakh,” says Arpi Yeganyan, a tour operator in Yerevan who specializes in wine excursions. Kataro was the first to label and distribute bottles internationally using the Armenian name “Artsakh” instead of the Azerbaijani “Nagorno-Karabakh”—a profoundly political branding choice.
After the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, this heritage was nearly lost. By 2023, more than 100,000 Armenians had been displaced from Artsakh. Less than 150 miles away, in Yerevan, Kataro became a symbol of what was lost. Bottles flew off the shelves at In Vino, the city’s first wine bar.
“Customers bought all the wines from Artsakh because they wanted to have a memory to keep. Most didn’t even drink them. They stored them like collectibles,” says In Vino co-founder Mariam Saghatelyan, an Armenian American sommelier.
Today, Kataro is the only one of Artsakh’s 15 established wineries that has restarted production—now at a new facility in Dzoraghbyur, just outside Yerevan. While it might not be wine from Avetissyan’s Artsakh terroir, it is still Artsakh wine through and through. Kataro bears the name of a treasured fourth-century monastery in Hadrut. On the walls of the new winery, an Artsakhian artist is painting the same patterned mural that once decorated the old one in Togh. And the smuggled khndoghni vines are growing again.
This isn’t the first time that Armenia’s winemaking has been shaped by struggle and perseverance. Humans have lived in its highlands, hills and valleys for thousands of years. Then came the Soviet era. Placed under Azerbaijani control despite being predominantly Armenian, Nagorno-Karabakh became the Soviet Union’s largest producer of grapes—but most were exported to other regions or used to make brandy.
Over the past decade, Armenian wine has roared back to life. When In Vino opened in 2012, Saghatelyan says there were “maybe 10 drinkable Armenian wines.” Now, she stocks hundreds, including Artsakh khndoghni wines. Even if he won’t say it, credit for the region’s resurgence belongs to Avetissyan, who established the Artsakh Wine Association, founded the Artsakh Wine Festival and proudly championed his homeland and its native grape.
Until 2020, the Artsakh Wine Festival brought tourism to a place where none existed. Thousands of people made the rugged five-hour drive from Stepanakert, the region’s de facto capital, to Togh. “It’s because of Grigori,” says Zaruhi Muradyan, executive director of the Vine & Wine Foundation of Armenia.
When Armenia lost Artsakh in 2023, Avetissyan suggested using Kataro’s new facilities in Dzoraghbyur to set up a cooperative, where displaced winemakers could restart production and rebuild their lives. “Many [couldn’t] even think about it yet, because [the war and loss] were so stressful,” says Muradyan, her voice cracking as she considers Avetissyan’s readiness to help. “He told me, This is life. Anything can happen. We must be ready for whatever challenges come our way.”
Today, Manvelyan’s khndoghni grapes—among the few that still belong to Armenia—are about a year old. He says he’s still two years away from being able to make wine from them.
When the next Kataro khndoghni is released, it won’t be the same wine. The grapes have also been displaced. The terroir is different. But even if the soil, elevation and climate aren’t quite right, Avetissyan and Manvelyan will likely do what they always do: laugh it off and get back to work.
“It’s not about the wine,” says Manvelyan. “It’s about the emotions that will be in the bottle.”