In Vernashen, a village tucked into the hills of Vayots Dzor, there is a winery named after a turtle. Krya is the Armenian word for it, and the name is a kind of promise: slow, patient, built to last. A large tortoise even wanders the grounds. Its most talked-about bottle has an equally modest name — Poqr, Armenian for “small.” But the story behind it is anything but.
A Winemaker Comes Home
Krya is the work of Tatevik Gabrielyan, who grew up in Vernashen and left for Switzerland at eighteen with a single goal: to become a winemaker. There, in 2012, she met Jean-Paul Berger, a German classmate in the enology program. The two went on to work at wineries in Germany and Russia before deciding to build something of their own — not in Europe, but in Tatevik’s home village.
What they came back to was family land: abandoned vineyards that had belonged to her grandfather, with vines more than seventy years old, on a property that once housed a village cheese factory. They restored the vines, renovated the buildings, and farmed without pesticides, insecticides, or chemical sprays, using less sulfur and copper than the rules allow. Their first release was just 800 bottles. Production has grown since, but Krya has stayed deliberately small, sold at the winery and through a handful of serious wine shops rather than chasing mass-market scale.
Poqr: A Small Bottle With a Big Idea
Poqr is a red field blend built on Areni — Armenia’s signature red grape — together with lesser-known native varieties Movuz, Tozot, and Sev Kharji, grown in Vayots Dzor. The 2022 vintage pours a medium garnet and smells of herbs, berries, and earth; on the palate it brings plum, raspberry, and bright acidity, finishing with cedar and a touch of earth. It is an honest, food-friendly wine that tastes of a place — and, at around $40 in the U.S. where you can find it, a gateway into the rare grapes that make Armenian wine different from anything else on the shelf.
Alongside Poqr, Krya makes a pure Areni red called Sev Areni, aged in oak, and a crisp white blend of Voskehat, Chilar, and Kangun. Across the range, the approach is the same: old vines, native grapes, and a mix of European training and Armenian tradition — French barrels alongside clay karas.
The Women Reshaping Armenian Wine
Tatevik is part of a quiet shift. For most of Armenia’s modern wine history, the cellar was considered a man’s domain; only about one in five graduates of the national agrarian university’s wine program in 2000 were women. That has been changing. Since 2014, the EVN Wine Academy in Yerevan has offered courses aimed at women, and women have become far more visible in vineyards and cellars across the country.
Today they lead at every level. Aimee Keushguerian founded her label Zulal at 23 to champion forgotten native grapes like Chilar and Tozot. Alina Mkrtchyan co-founded Voskeni with her brother on land her family farmed before it was seized in 1925. Arpine Manukyan has gone further in the Master of Wine program than any other Armenian winemaker. Zaruhi Muradyan, a trained enologist and professor, heads Armenia’s Vine and Wine Foundation. As Manukyan has put it, “everything is decided by the quality of your work.”
Poqr may be small, but it carries all of that: a daughter of Vernashen bringing her grandfather’s vines back to life, and a generation of women making sure Armenia’s oldest craft has a future.
Explore the Armenian Wine Directory
Krya is one of more than twenty producers now featured in Think Armenian’s new Armenian Wine Directory — a free, searchable catalog of Armenian wines and the people who make them. Search by grape, style, or region; read short profiles of wineries from the Ararat Valley to Areni village; learn the native grapes you’ll see on labels; and use the “Find it” links to locate bottles near you. It’s the companion to our monthly Wine of the Month pick — and it keeps growing. Buying Armenian wine is patriotic consumerism in its most ancient form. Start exploring, and raise a glass to the winemakers bringing it back.
Sources: Origins Wine, Advantour, Vinography, Flatiron Wines, OC Media, Regional Post, The Armenian Weekly.