Fun & Social in Armenia

It is a Friday evening in early June. On Saryan Street, two blocks behind the Yerevan Opera, the city's annual Wine Days festival is in full swing — 100 small Armenian wineries have set up tasting tables down both sides of three closed-off streets, around 30,000 people walking slowly between them with a souvenir wine glass in hand, a soft jazz band playing on the corner, food trucks doing brisk business in khorovats sandwiches and grilled lavash wraps. Couples sit on the kerb edges sharing tasting notes; groups of friends in their 30s, 40s and 50s drift from table to table comparing the country's indigenous Areni Noir reds; older Armenian men in straw hats discuss the latest vintages with the winemakers in serious tones. The festival is famously low-key — this is a wine country, not a club country, and the atmosphere is closer to a Provence village celebration than to a city party scene.

This is the central pleasure of Armenia's social life. The country has world-class wine (over 70 small producers working with the world's oldest known wine grape, the Areni Noir), world-class brandy (the famous ARARAT cognac-method brandy that allegedly impressed Churchill at Yalta, and its rival Noy with its 19th-century cellars under the historic Yerevan fortress), and increasingly serious craft beer at Armenia's pioneer brewery Dargett. The Saryan Street wine-bar quarter behind the Opera is the obvious starting point for any evening out — a stretch of six small natural-wine bars within 100 metres of each other, all open until 1 am, all with outdoor terrace tables in the warm months. Add the traditional Armenian taverns with live duduk music, the Soviet-era jazz clubs, the riverside summer beer gardens, and you have a social culture that works equally well for a romantic dinner for two, an evening with friends in their 40s, or a celebration with extended family across three generations.

The country's evening rhythm is later than northern Europe and earlier than southern Spain. Dinner starts around 19:00 to 20:00; the wine bars on Saryan Street fill up between 19:00 and 21:00 (best to arrive by 19:30 for a table outside in summer); the Republic Square fountains do their nightly synchronised water-and-music show at 21:00 sharp from late April through early October; the jazz clubs and live-music taverns hit their stride after 22:00. Almost everything in central Yerevan is walkable end to end in 20 minutes, taxis are inexpensive (the Yandex Go app works perfectly and a cross-city ride is rarely more than $5.4), and the central Kentron district is one of the safest urban environments in the wider region. By the end of a long evening you will be planning the next one.

Saryan Street — the wine-bar quarter

The two-block stretch of Martiros Saryan Street between Pushkin Street and Sayat-Nova Avenue is the city's clearest evening destination. The transformation began in 2013 when In Vino opened as the country's first dedicated wine club — a small shop-and-bar concept with 1,000-plus Armenian and international labels available by the glass or to take home. Within five years six other independent wine bars had opened on the same street: Wine Republic, 28 Wine Bar, Vinegrad, Decant and the seasonal pop-ups. The result is a one-block density unmatched anywhere else in the Caucasus.

The street fills steadily from 18:00 onwards. The bars all work walk-in only with no advance reservations, so the standard strategy is to arrive at 19:00, find a table at one of the bars while there are still outdoor seats free, work through a flight of glasses (a typical tasting flight of three Armenian wines runs $6.7 to $12), then drift to the next bar an hour later. Cheese and charcuterie plates with Armenian basturma, hard mountain cheeses, walnut-and-honey accompaniments are universal, around $12 for a sharing board.

The street's biggest weekend of the year is Yerevan Wine Days — the first Friday-Saturday-Sunday of June, when Saryan, Tumanyan and Moskovyan streets are all closed to traffic and turned into an open-air wine festival with 100-plus producers pouring tastes from 16:00 to 22:30 across three days. Entry is free; a Wine Enjoyment Package (a branded glass and tasting coupons) is sold at festival booths and costs around $38. Hotels and Airbnbs across the central Kentron district sell out months in advance for this weekend — book your accommodation by March if you intend to come for the festival.

Beyond Saryan Street, a wider wine-bar and cocktail scene has emerged across the central Kentron district. Vine on Tumanyan Street (more upscale, sit-down sommelier service), Charles on Charents Street (small-production natural wines, no menu, the staff pick for you), and several hotel rooftop bars including the Marriott Skybar with the city's best Republic Square fountain view from above.

Brandy, craft beer, traditional taverns

Armenian brandy — technically a cognac-method spirit aged in oak barrels for three to thirty years — is the country's historic drink and a serious cultural inheritance. The two big producers, ARARAT (Yerevan Brandy Company, part of Pernod Ricard since 1998) and Noy (privately Armenian-owned, on the rival side of the Hrazdan gorge), both run guided tours through their historic factory buildings and cellars with structured tastings. The two tours have very different characters — ARARAT is polished and international with a modern interactive museum, Noy is more atmospheric with deep 19th-century vaulted cellars beneath the historic Yerevan fortress on the hill above the river. Most serious brandy fans do both in a single afternoon.

The country's craft beer scene is much newer but increasingly serious. Dargett Brewpub at 72 Aram Street, opened 2016 by the Durgarian brothers, is the country's first modern-day craft brewery — 20-plus beers on tap in their flagship Yerevan brewpub, including a famously good apricot wheat beer, a season-rotating IPA programme, and Armenia's first commercially-produced sour. The brewpub is a large two-level space with the brewery on display through the glass walls behind the bar, and a serious kitchen turning out brewpub favourites (pork ribs, smoked brisket, mushroom flatbreads). 379 Torch & Brew on Mashtots and Beer Academy on Pushkin Street are the two smaller contenders in the same space.

The traditional Armenian taverns — called pandok in Armenian — are the evening equivalent of the daytime restaurant culture. The classic format combines hearty traditional Armenian (and Caucasian) cuisine with live folk-music programmes: duduk and zurna players, sometimes a traditional dance troupe, occasionally jazz interpretations of folk standards. Caucasus Tavern on Hanrapetutyan Street (since 2003) is the elder statesman of the format — nine themed dining rooms designed to evoke a 19th-century Caucasus inn, full duduk-and-singing programmes most evenings, the city's most-recommended khinkali on the menu. Tavern Yerevan on Teryan Street (Yeremyan Projects' original 2006 venue) is the larger format with similar live-music programming.

For live music outside the tavern format, the city has a small but serious jazz and chamber-music scene. The Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall runs weekly Friday-night Armenian Philharmonic concerts October to June; the Komitas Chamber Music Hall has chamber and duduk evenings most weekends; the Yerevan Jazz Festival in the second week of October brings international names to the Khachaturian hall. The Saryan Street weekend evenings often include a busking jazz trio on the corner outside Wine Republic.

Lake Sevan — a summer day-out

From mid-June to early September the city's social life partly migrates to Lake Sevan, an hour's drive north of Yerevan up the M4 highway. At 1,900 metres altitude the lake stays cool when central Yerevan reaches 38°C in July and August, and the south-eastern shore has developed a serious lakeside-restaurant and beach-club scene over the last decade. The standard day-out plan is to leave Yerevan around 11:00, arrive lakeside around 12:30, take a swim, have a long lunch of grilled Sevan trout (ishkhan) and a glass of Armenian white wine on a wooden terrace overlooking the water, then drive back in the late afternoon.

The most-recommended beach clubs are around the Sevan town and Tsapatagh village on the southern shore: TUF Aghveran (sandy beach, sun loungers, full restaurant), Best Western Bohemian Resort (proper beach club with day-pass option), and the older but characterful Sevan resort restaurants around the Sevanavank monastery peninsula. Most charge a small day-pass for sun loungers and pool access (around $13 to $27) and full lunch will add another $22 to $40 per person with wine.

The lake is reached by private car (Yandex Go for an hour-each-way ride is around $32 per direction), by rental car (cheapest if you intend more than one Sevan day), or by the marshrutka minibus from Yerevan's Northern Bus Station (the cheapest at around $4.0 each way, frequent departures, drops you near the Sevanavank peninsula). Most central Yerevan hotels can also arrange a private driver for the day — flat rate around $108 for an 8-hour day with waiting time included.

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