YEREVAN, October 10. /ARKA/ It was a holiday in the village of Areni last weekend. For the 11th time this village in the southern Armenian province of Vayots Dzor hosted the Areni Wine Festival, held on the first Saturday of October.

Locals and winemakers showcased and treated the guests to their wines throughout the village. Hundreds of tourists enjoyed every moment of the festival, ACBA-CREDIT AFRICOLE BANK, the main sponsor of the traditional event, said in a press release.

“This past spring ACBA-CREDIT AGRICOLE BANK was the sponsor of Yerevan Wine Days and now we have the honor to be the sponsor of this festival hosted by Areni. Our main goal is to support producers, processors, and small and medium-sized businesses in general. This segment is very important to us. We have been providing free training courses to SMEs for the past 4 years and some of them are related to tourism, particularly to the hospitality business. We pass to them the localized international experience, and we try to help these organizations do a better management, a better HR policy, a better marketing, and overall a better business. We believe that small and medium-sized businesses are one of the cornerstones of our economy and we are doing our best to pass to them the best experience that has been accumulated around the world,” said ACBA-CREDIT AGRICOLE BANK Deputy Chief Executive Officer Arsen Melkonyan.

“Every year the number of participants of the Areni Wine Festival is growing. This year is no exception. Thanks to the festival, Areni is known in the international and domestic tourism markets as an ancient cradle of winemaking and an attractive tourist destination,” reads the press release.

ACBA was established in 1995 as part of EU’s TACIS program. As a result of a long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation between ACBA Bank and the French Credit Agricole the latter became the biggest shareholder of ACBA in 2006, September. ACBA was restructured, becoming a closed joint stock company and was renamed ACBA CREDIT AGRICOLE BANK. -0----