According to one of the most realistic stories in the Bible, Noah came down from the top of Ararat mountain and planted the first grape vine. Doing this he set the precedence for the viticulture.
In the XIIIth century the great explorer Marco Polo described Mount Ararat as an inaccessible mountain with ever-increasing snow-capped peaks. The first documented ascent to the Great Ararat is dated 27 September 1829, when Johann Jacob von Parrot, a 37-year-old German professor, reached the peak on his third attempt. A little later, in 1876, one of his followers, the English scientist and statesman James Bryce, looking at the Ararat Valley from the top of the mountain would say: “If in fact this is where man first set foot on land, you couldn’t imagine a more impressive center of the universe.”