The tragedy of Armenia (and its brandy)

It is impossible not to sympathise with Armenia. It has spent much of its history between the hammer and the anvil, trying to fend off imperial predators and usually failing. What if the Armenians had inhabited the British Isles? Apart from the savage Irish in their bogs and cabins, the main enemy would have been the French, whose malevolence could be drowned in the English Channel. With such a happy geography, Armenians would be as numerous and prosperous as we are. But neither geography nor history was benign, with one paradoxical exception. Because the Russians rescued them from the Turks, the Armenians were rarely disloyal to the Soviet Union.

Even so, their grog-makers suffered. The Soviet system drove more and more people to drink, of worse and worse quality. At the beginning of last century, Armenia’s brandy enjoyed a reputation second only to the French, but that had long ceased to be true when I first encountered it.