Samarkand's Vendimia: Uzbekistan's Forgotten Wine Country Wakes for Autumn

By the second week of September, Samarkand smells of crushed fruit. The heat that flattened the city through August lifts overnight. The light turns the colour of old honey, and out along the roads towards Urgut the vineyards fill with people - whole families on ladders, plastic crates stacked in the dust, children eating the harvest faster than anyone can pick it.

If you have ever stood in a vineyard during the vendimia, you already know this feeling. You simply did not expect to find it five thousand kilometres east, beneath the turquoise domes of the Silk Road.

Uzbekistan is not a country most travellers associate with wine. That is exactly why this season is extraordinary.

Samarkand wine tours: the cellar that won gold in Paris

In the 1860s a Russian merchant named Dmitry Filatov settled in Samarkand and began buying grapes from local farmers. By 1868 he had founded a winery. He worked with the sweet varieties this oasis had grown for centuries and crossed them with vines carried from Crimea and Europe. One of his own creations - a grape he named biishty, "paradisiacal" - took a gold medal at the International Wine and Brandy Exhibition in Paris in 1883.

Filatov's successor was Mikhail Khovrenko, the first professor of winemaking in Russia, and the factory still carries his name. Today it processes roughly 20,000 tonnes of grapes a year. Inside Filatov's old house, the small Museum of Winemaking is one of the quietly surprising hours you can spend in Samarkand: dusty bottles, faded exhibition medals, and a tasting flight of dessert wines that taste of sun-dried apricot, raisin and walnut.

Nobody comes to Samarkand for the wine. Everybody who tries it remembers it.

Uzbekistan in autumn: the season locals keep for themselves

September and October are the months Uzbeks quietly recommend to their own families. Daytime temperatures settle between 22 and 28 degrees. The summer humidity is gone, replaced by dry, clean air that makes a full day of walking through madrasah courtyards a pleasure rather than an endurance test.

And the markets are at their peak. Siyob Bazaar in Samarkand piles up pomegranates the size of fists, ten kinds of grape, late melons, walnuts, and mountains of dried apricot. Vendors will cut you a slice before you have asked. In Bukhara the mulberry trees around Lyabi Hauz turn yellow and the evening call to prayer carries across water that is finally cool enough to sit beside.

The Registan at this time of year is a different building. Photograph it at eight in the morning, when the low sun hits the majolica and the tilework goes from blue to violet to gold in twenty minutes, and you will understand why people have written about this square for six hundred years.

Why Spanish travellers feel at home on the Silk Road

Travellers from Spain arrive in Samarkand and keep saying the same word: familiar. It is not imagination. The geometric tilework, the horseshoe arches, the shaded inner courtyards, the fountains, the calligraphy running like lace across a doorway - the same Islamic decorative grammar that shaped Andalusia shaped this city, at the other end of the same civilisation.

The rhythm of the day helps too. Uzbeks eat late, eat together, eat generously, and treat a shared table as the point of the evening rather than the end of it. A plov cooked over open fire, tomatoes and onion with basil, non bread torn by hand, green tea poured back into the pot three times before it is served - this is a country that will not let you eat alone.

Practical detail matters as well: Spanish and other EU passport holders travel to Uzbekistan visa-free for stays of up to 30 days. No embassy queue, no e-visa form. You book the flight and you go.

Silk Road tours from Samarkand: how to travel it well

Distances that once meant a night on a train now take a morning. The Afrosiyob high-speed service links Tashkent and Samarkand in around two hours, and continues to Bukhara in roughly three and a half to four. Since May 2026 the new Jaloliddin Manguberdi train has run the full Tashkent to Khiva route - 1,022 kilometres - in about seven and a half hours, at speeds up to 260 km/h, against fourteen to sixteen hours on the old sleeper.

It means a realistic autumn itinerary looks like this: Tashkent, then Samarkand for the harvest and the Registan, then Bukhara for three unhurried days of courtyards and caravanserai, then Khiva inside its walls at dawn. Ten days, no internal flights, no wasted hours.

One caution: Uzbekistan received close to 7.75 million foreign visitors in the first seven months of 2026 alone, up 22.6% year on year. Autumn is the peak of that curve. The good boutique courtyard hotels in Bukhara and Khiva are small - twelve rooms, sometimes eight - and September and October fill early.

Travel it with a licensed local operator

GoUzbekistan is the travel brand of Lochin Express Plyus LLC, a company that has been operating in Uzbekistan since 2007 and holds tour operator and domestic tourism licence No. 662280, issued on 13 March 2025 by the Committee for Tourism Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan. We are based in Bukhara, on Islam Karimov Street, and we build every itinerary ourselves on the ground - the drivers, the guides, the family kitchens, the vineyard visits.

Tell us how you like to travel and we will build the route around it. Create your own custom tour, or explore our tours to see where the Silk Road can take you this autumn.

Plan your Uzbekistan trip - in your language

العربية

في سبتمبر تنضج كروم سمرقند، وتمتلئ أسواق طريق الحرير بالرمان والبطيخ والعنب، وتصبح درجات الحرارة مثالية للتجول بين المساجد الفيروزية. السياحة في أوزبكستان في الخريف تعني سمرقند وبخارى وخيوة بأجمل صورها. صمّم رحلتك الخاصة إلى أوزبكستان الآن.

Deutsch

Im September beginnt in Samarkand die Weinlese: milde 22 bis 28 Grad, Basare voller Granatäpfel und Melonen, goldenes Licht auf den Kuppeln. Eine Seidenstraße Rundreise durch Samarkand, Buchara und Chiwa ist jetzt am schönsten. Planen Sie Ihre individuelle Usbekistan Reise oder entdecken Sie unsere Touren.

Español

Septiembre trae la vendimia a Samarcanda: de 22 a 28 grados, mercados repletos de granadas y melones, y una bodega que ganó medalla de oro en París en 1883. Recorre la Ruta de la Seda entre Samarcanda, Bujará y Jiva en su mejor momento. Diseña tu viaje a Uzbekistán a medida o descubre nuestros circuitos.

Français

En septembre, Samarcande entre dans sa plus belle saison : lumière dorée, vendanges, marchés débordant de grenades et de melons, caves centenaires. Un voyage en Ouzbékistan sur la Route de la Soie, de Samarcande à Boukhara et Khiva, n'a jamais été aussi agréable. Créez votre voyage sur mesure ou découvrez nos circuits.

中文

九月的撒马尔罕气候宜人，葡萄园迎来丰收，集市上堆满石榴、甜瓜与葡萄。沿着丝绸之路游览撒马尔罕、布哈拉与希瓦，正是一年中最美的季节。立即定制您的乌兹别克斯坦专属行程，或浏览我们的线路。

Русский

Сентябрь в Самарканде - это золотой свет, виноградники в разгар сбора урожая и базары, полные гранатов и дынь. Пройдите Шёлковый путь от Самарканда до Бухары и Хивы, пока держится мягкая осенняя погода. Составьте индивидуальный тур в Узбекистан или посмотрите наши туры.