Los Angeles Times, CA
July 27 2005
A match made in Yerevan
An Armenian brandy and the perfect almond kataif — you’d think you
were in the Caucasus.
By Charles Perry, Times Staff Writer
I first had Armenian brandy in a remote burg in northeast Uzbekistan.
We sat around the breakfast table eating steamed Uzbek sweet potato
dumplings and drinking Armenian brandy while watching “Casper, the
Friendly Ghost,” dubbed in Russian.
The family I was staying with seemed to think breakfast was a little
early for brandy, but my host was simply breaking out the good stuff
for the guest, as Central Asian etiquette demands. Armenian brandy is
highly regarded in the countries of the old Soviet empire, above all
in Russia and Ukraine, which between them import millions of bottles
a month.
I was pretty sure Uzbek sweet potato mantu are not the ideal match
for Armenian brandy. But the issue remained academic until recently,
when I discovered a huge selection of Armenian brandies at Mission
Liquor in Pasadena. Because Southern California has a sizable
Armenian population, Mission stocks about two dozen versions, from
3-year-olds at about $9 to rarities more than 30 years old in the $90
price range.
Another benefit of having such a large Armenian colony is that we
have top-notch Armenian bakeries. Putting the two sources together, I
tasted a variety of brandies and pastries and found a particularly
delicious combination: a 25-year-old brandy called Mesrob Mashtots
paired with the excellent almond kataif from Sarkis Pastry in
Glendale. The buttery, crunchy pastry has the toasted flavors to
flatter an oak-aged spirit, and its plush almond center makes a
particularly agreeable background for this smooth, ethereal but
mouthfilling brandy, with its magisterial notes of smoke, licorice,
dried fruit and wild herbs.
Out of Arax
Most Armenian brandy is made in the agricultural heart of the
Republic of Armenia, the Arax Valley, which Armenia shares
(reluctantly) with its neighbors Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan. It’s
distilled from local grape varieties such as Garan Damak, Kangu and
Voskehat – not surprisingly, since it was somewhere in the Caucasus
that winemaking originated, as the story of Noah suggests. Armenia
also makes wine from its local grape varieties, but neighboring
Georgia is better known for wine.
Whether because of the grapes or the Krasnodar oak barrels used for
aging, Armenian brandies tend to be light and elegant, but you
wouldn’t mistake them for French brandy. In place of the honey,
caramel and floral qualities of Cognac, their flavors often seem to
include toasted nut and exotic fruit notes. In the mouth, they tend
to a suave, papery dryness.
For decades, all the distillers had to sell whatever they made to the
Yerevan Brandy Co., which marketed under the brand name Ararat. After
the Soviet collapse, the French liquor giant Pernod-Ricard bought the
118-year-old Yerevan/Ararat brand and started upgrading the
operation.
In the meanwhile, some of the small distillers have started marketing
brandy themselves. The French connection with Armenian brandy goes
beyond Ararat, by the way – Armenian distilleries send some of their
grandest brandies in cask to France, to be put in rather floridly
shaped bottles, like giant perfume bottles, because Armenia lacks the
facilities to do so. From there they are shipped to Armenian
communities around the world.
Places, faces and flavors
Probably because Armenian brandy-making was centralized for so long,
labels rarely refer to where the brandy was made. To be sure, many
older brandies are named for mountains or other geographic features
of Armenia (or famous figures in Armenian history), but those are
brand names. Younger brandies have three to six stars on their
labels, a star for each year of aging.
Frankly, I’m still just getting my feet wet, as it were, in Armenian
brandy. Besides the Mesrob Mashtots, I’ve tried a small
representative range, starting with a 6-year-old Eghvard (named for a
famous church), which had a plush butterscotchy aroma that made me
think of an old Madeira.
Then I had Artavazd (10 years; named for an Armenian king), which
superimposed a smoky quality – almost like tobacco smoke (one of my
colleagues thought it smelled like butterscotch in an ashtray).
Vaspurakan, an 18-year-old named for a medieval Armenian kingdom, had
a quite different emphasis, something like dried apricots and orange
peel. That’s quite a variety of styles.
I was particularly knocked out by the Mesrob Mashtots/kataif
combination. But many Armenians pair brandy with everything.
“There’s definitely a split in the Armenian diaspora about when to
drink brandy,” says Melkon Khosrovian, owner of the flavored vodka
company Modern Spirits. “There are some who drink brandy with
virtually every part of the meal, treating it in much the same way as
wine or vodka. In our family, we drink it mainly with the mezze and
then again with desserts.”
But for me, the best time is after a nice dinner. An agreeable
sensation of crunch and sweetness, a mouth-filling flood of brandy,
then a long aftertaste that drifts away into the night.
Mesrob Mashtots Armenian brandy (about $35) is available at Mission
Liquor, 1801 W. Washington, Pasadena, (626) 797-0500. Almond kataif
is $7 a pound (about 10 pieces) at Sarkis Pastries, 1111 S. Glendale
Ave., Glendale, (818) 956-6636.