Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Alcoholic drinks from Armenia

Pomegranate wine (Armenia)նռան գինի

Armenian pomegranate wine is made like a grape wine, by crushing and pressing the fruit and fermenting the juice, and the fermentation is usually stopped by cooling the tanks so some natural sugar stays. One Armenian winery ferments at 15–16 °C and ages the wine for 6 months in oak. No Armenian laboratory study or standard was found, so the measured numbers come from a Greek laboratory study.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks7 months

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceThe amounts are from a Greek laboratory study that fermented 200 mL aliquots of juice. No Armenian recipe with amounts was found.
Pomegranate juiceThe Greek study used pasteurised juice of the Wonderful variety (14.5 °Brix, pH 3.12). In Armenia some of the best and oldest pomegranate plantings are around Meghri[kokkinomagoulos2021][newsam-style2024]
Sucrose, or concentrated pomegranate juice (100 g/L), concentrated grape juice (100 g/L) or honey (70 g/L)55 g per litre of juiceAdded in the Greek study to raise the juice from 14.5 to 20 °Brix[kokkinomagoulos2021]
Wine yeast (Saccharomyces bayanus)2.4 × 10⁵ CFU/mLCommercial red wine yeast in the Greek study[kokkinomagoulos2021]
Starterdefined-culture (commercial wine yeast in the one Greek laboratory study that records it)

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Pomegranates are crushed gently and pressed for their red juice

Step 1 of 4
Press the pomegranates for juice
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Saccharomyces

As with grape wine, the fruit is crushed, pressed and then fermented. The skin should not be damaged when crushing, or its bitterness passes into the juice. Output: juice.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Armenian pomegranate wine is made like a grape wine, by crushing and pressing the fruit and fermenting the juice, and the fermentation is usually stopped by cooling the tanks so some natural sugar stays. One Armenian winery ferments at 15–16 °C and ages the wine for 6 months in oak. No Armenian laboratory study or standard was found, so the measured numbers come from a Greek laboratory study. Made in 4 steps over 7 months. The longest step, age in oak, takes 6 months (Aghajanian L. 2024). Saccharomyces wine yeast does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step6 monthsReported[newsam-style2024]Age in oak
Temperature15–16 °CReported[newsam-style2024]Ferment the juice

What makes this one different

Pomegranate wine is made from pomegranate juice instead of grapes, and in the Greek study the juice had to be raised from 14.5 to 20 °Brix with added sugar to reach 10 % alcohol. Armenian makers usually stop the fermentation by cooling to keep some sugar.

Greek study, juice
Pasteurised Wonderful juice at 14.5 °Brix and pH 3.12, raised to 20 °Brix with added sugar before fermentation (not an Armenian figure)
Greek study, fermentation
14 days at 25 °C or 21 days at 15 °C, in sterile glass containers with airlocks (not an Armenian figure)
Greek study, alcohol
The wines held 7.9 to 10.0 % v/v alcohol and 4.1 to 8.4 g/L of reducing sugar (not an Armenian figure)

Related ferments

Safety

In the Greek laboratory study the wines were made from pasteurised juice under airlocks. The wines ended at pH 3.03 to 3.29 (the juice was 3.12) with 0.8 to 1.2 g/L volatile acidity as acetic acid.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Wikipedia says pomegranate wine production has its roots in Armenia and dates back centuries. A 2024 column describes the pomegranate as a sacred symbol of fertility since ancient times, grown around Meghri for thousands of years. A 2025 UNDP item records that the Hovhannisyan family of Alvanq, in Meghri, had made pomegranate juice and wine for 20 years and had processed over 20 tons of fruit.

  1. [kokkinomagoulos2021] Kokkinomagoulos E., Nikolaou A., Kourkoutas Y., Biliaderis C.G., Kandylis P. 2021, Impact of sugar type addition and fermentation temperature on pomegranate alcoholic beverage production and characteristics, Antioxidants 10(6):889paper
  2. [newsam-style2024] Aghajanian L. 2024, Wine Story, Blood of the Earth, getting to know Armenian pomegranate wines, NEWS.am STYLE, 23 January 2024web
  3. [undp-sca2025] UNDP Sustainable Communities programme, The Woman Winemaker of Meghri, Pomegranate Project, 9 April 2025web
  4. [WP:Fruit wine] Wikipedia, Fruit wine, 'Pomegranate wine' (outline only)wiki