Wine in Samarkand

Grapes have been growing in Samarkand for longer than most wine countries have existed: they came here along the Silk Road and stayed. Wine was made here long before Islam, then in spite of it, and from 1868 on the Russian model — that was the year Samarkand's first winery opened. The tasting is held in its cellars, at Khovrenko's, and those cellars are still working.

In the cellar it is fourteen degrees whatever the weather, and after the Samarkand street outside that is the first thing you notice. The barrels are old, oak, some of them from the last century. The light comes from a single doorway.

The tasting runs from dry to sweet. Five local wines are poured: two dry, a rosé, a sweet and a fortified one. The wine is simpler than European wine, lower in acidity and openly fruity. Samarkand's sweet and fortified wines are what people here are proud of, and they really are better than the dry ones: there is more sun here than a light wine needs.

The main event is the food. Every glass comes with a small plate: a dried apricot, an almond, a piece of flatbread, a bit of local cheese. The pairing that lands most often is the fortified wine with the dried apricot — that combination is remembered better than the wine itself.

An hour and a half, maybe two. You step out into the heat and for a few minutes you have no idea where you are.