Hagop Kazanjian was born in Aleppo, Syria to an Armenian family. Moved to Armenia in 2006 and pursued education in oriental studies and a career in web development. After over 10 years in IT an opportunity to make a shift into winemaking showed itself. In 2019 after a 3 month compressed winemaking and wine business training course Hagop along with his wife Gohar started producing their first wine, Galar, a limited quantity dry red wine from Haghtanak variety, they went on to establish the company Galar Vines.
Following the production of the first wine, they continued to work on developing the production and the company, they started works on establishing a vineyard on a plot of land that is owned by the family and hasn’t been used for over 15 years, and started the production of the second vintage of red and white wines with bigger quantities.
Currently Galar wines (Haghtanak Reserve 2019, Haghtanak 2020 and Voskehat 2021) are being sold in the local Armenian market, while the company explores potential partnerships to export the wine to the North America and European markets.
Hagop is also studying in the EVN wine academy, a 18 month certificate course for wine making and wine business implemented by iCARE center in partnership with Geisenheim University, to further his knowledge and skills in winemaking.