Areni Wine Festival inspires Armenian winemakers

More than 200 winemakers took part in a wine festival held in the Armenian village of Areni. Participation in the event allows increasing brand awareness and make useful contacts for increasing sales, winemakers believe.

The Areni Wine Festival is held annually in the first week of October. According to Ani Mavyan, the project manager of the "Areni Festival" Fund, over 20 Armenian wine brands and about 200 homemade wines from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh were presented at the festival.

The flow of visitors, as she said, "has increased surprisingly dramatically," despite the pandemic. "Most of them are foreign tourists who came to Armenia specifically for the wine festival," Ms Mavyan has added.

Apart from wines, the festival featured traditional meals, sweets, crops, works of artisans and painters and other goods. According to Ani Mavyan business problems of both industrial and home winemakers are being addressed at the event.

The major festival guests are tourists from abroad, who came especially to the event, Nune Manukyan, the director of the Association of Armenian Festivals, has confirmed.

According to her story, in 2020, the tourism sector was severely affected by the pandemic; and since there are no restrictions on holding mass events this year, there is a good opportunity to restore the sphere of the event tourism.