Original subtitles

I've been a wine professional now for, you know,

roughly 15 years.

I've seen thousands of different grape varieties.

I've tasted tens of thousands,

if not hundreds of thousands of different wines.

As sommeliers, as wine people,

we spend a lot of time looking forward.

You know, what's-- what's the new cool thing?

But I think it's equally as interesting to look back

and start to understand, really,

where did these things come from.

[soft dramatic music]

-Tomorrow morning I fly to Tehran -Mm-hm.

and spend the day in Tehran seeing the wine merchant.

Checking out the grapes.

[Dustin] The ancient world of wine

really centers around modern day Iran, Armenia, Georgia,

Caucus Mountains, these places.

Iran is one of the countries

considered the birthplace of the wine, you know.

They belong to a different club.

[Dustin] This area of the world, for wine,

is really starting to wake up.

It's an ancient place that's been sleeping for a long time.

Is there any concern with the truckers

getting the grapes across the border?

Yeah, the problem is they're not eating grapes.

I mean, as far Iran is concerned,

all grapes are eating grapes.

[soft dramatic music]

[Dustin] This is just like one of the wildest things

I think that could ever happen in wine.

You okay?

Um [chuckles] well, it's not--

I'll call you from jail.

-[both laughing] -Okay?

-Please don't. -[both laughing]

If you have to call me from jail, just don't call.

[Vahe] Okay, I understand.

The government has an alcohol ban.

It's extremely illegal and what we're doing is very public.

I mean, a little danger is fine, I don't mind.

You know, do I want to go to prison in Iran or elsewhere?

Probably not. But anyway, it'll be fine, yeah.

-You're okay, you'll be okay. -Yeah.

[both laughing]

-All right. -Okay, yeah.

I'll leave you, let me go.

I have other things to do.

-You keep the map. -Yeah.

And I'll call you on WhatsApp.

-Okay. -Okay, bye.

Okay? Thanks.

[soft dramatic orchestral music]

It's the most dangerous wine in the world.

[soft dramatic orchestral music continues]

Nice, clear day.

Look at Ararat, so majestic.

Noah's Ark, on the mountain, sat on the Mount Ararat.

Then Noah came down, planted vineyard,

made wine and he got drunk.

I dunno if you know the story.

It's in the Bible. There's no escaping it.

Hey, Luca, it's me.

Hi, not too much.

Is it Hell's Canyon or Devil's Canyon?

Hell's Canyon.

And does the road go a little bit in

so we don't hear the car,

so if we want to shoot,

is there a road that goes into the Hell's Canyon?

No, I'm not gonna go through the canyon.

I want to see the canyon, but not be on the road.

I want to, so we can walk a little bit down,

is that what you're saying?

All right.

Okay, all right. Thanks, honey, okay.

I'll call you back later, bye.

The first time I came here was '97.

I was born in Syria, but I grew up in Lebanon.

But then I went to Italy when I was 19,

the first time, a couple of years,

fell in love with the country,

then went to the States, became serious,

got my college degree, then became un-serious,

opened a restaurant. You know, that kind of thing.

I'm Armenian.

Parents, Armenian, Armenian school, church,

everything else was Armenian.

So we grew up as Armenians in a host country.

Lebanon was a host, Syria was a host country.

We went, we worked hard, we did whatever we had to do,

but we didn't mingle too much.

When you are always being pushed around,

you figure out how to hang in there, you know,

how to survive.

We're always in this survival mode, you know?

But the beauty of being on your own land,

your own soil, your own country,

is that in the context of vineyards,

you can plant and you don't have to worry about it

because you don't worry that you have to move again.

We're not moving anything from now.

From here, we're not going anywhere.

I'm not going anywhere. My family will be here.

So the vineyards that we plant will be here

for a very long time.

Yeah, so, sorry, I didn't know what animal

was coming behind me.

What's up, bro? You wanna be in the video, huh?

[laughs]

Cute, huh?

Oh, Aimee would kill for it.

You know, Aimee has a horse. She rides a horse, yeah.

[Aimee] I never call him Dad.

I never call Vahe Dad.

Vahe is always Vahe to me.

We work together. It's Vahe.

He's a dreamer, romantic type, but he sees the big picture.

So I have twins, Luca and Aimee.

The first project that I did in Armenia...

the first six barrels I made, I made with Luca, my son.

You know, he likes it, he loves drinking it,

he loves everything about it,

but he's not into the wine business per se.

But somehow she got attracted to the wine,

the concept, the vineyards, the making of the wine,

the consuming of the wine, the whole scene.

I'm Armenian, I'm half Armenian.

My father's Armenian.

My mother is very New England American.

I never really felt Armenian until I came to Armenia

and started working in wine.

I graduated college.

A couple of weeks before I graduated,

my father sent me an email and said,

"Aimee, would you like to come work in wine?"

It took me about five minutes to answer, and I answered yes.

And then I came to Armenia

and that was my first harvest that fall.

[Vahe] She really loves it.

And she started from day one also to have her own brand.

[Aimee] This is about 100 years old.

[Vahe] It's her own wine.

She does all the marketing, the branding,

the positioning, rather than work for the father.

Except for our sparkling wine project

that carries our family name

and that will be a family brand.

For me, I think it is, in some ways, it's a legacy thing.

So now you have two generations of Armenians making wine,

which is pretty amazing considering how young

modern wine making is in Armenia,

to have a father and daughter making wine together.

Of course, Armenians have been making wine

for thousands of years,

but it's been interrupted for the past 100.

Vines are not like tomatoes.

Vines are two or three generation crops.

A vine will live until it's 70, 100 years old.

And vines have to struggle to survive. So do people.

[soft dramatic vocalizing]

[Aimee] Armenia is situated in the Caucasus Mountains.

We're surrounded by Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Iran.

We are situated in the highlands,

so everything is high elevation.

We sit in this mountaintop.

[Armen Sarkissian] It's a nation that has this advantage today

of being a global nation.

I mean, Armenians were always tradesman,

because we lived on the crossroads

of different civilizations.

As being a crossroads of civilization,

it has a very old culture.

That culture is about architecture...

because Armenia was one of the first

to adopt Christian architecture.

It was the first state kingdom that became Christian

in the year 301.

[soft dramatic vocalizing continues]

[Aimee] Armenians, we have a sense of territory,

of place, of culture, of food, of morality, of family.

Armenia is our land because we've survived here

for thousands of years.

[Boris] In general, our existence is a miracle for me.

As a historian, it's very difficult to explain

how we survived, you know.

It's really miracle by itself.

[Aimee] The darkest moment for Armenians

came in the form of genocide.

Preceding World War I,

the Ottoman Empire attempted to erase

a large population of Armenians

and other Christian minorities living in their territories.

[Armen Khachaturian] We lost 1.5 million Armenians.

Fifty percent of the Armenian people.

My grandfather was a survivor.

He lost his entire family of 17.

[Vahe] We were Christians in a Muslim country.

There was a war going on.

They thought it was a good time to clean up the mess.

[Jonathan] While many civilizations have disappeared

way before classical Greece collapsed,

the Roman Empire collapsed,

the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

If you're from a mountain civilization,

the land is everything because it's rare.

You need to hold onto as much as possible.

[soft dramatic vocalizing continues]

[Armen Khachaturian] Being Armenian is, there's a sense of pride.

Growing up, there were so few of us in the world

and we've been around for so long,

there's a sense of pride for that survival.

[Vahe] Genocide is part of our family, who we are.

Most of our songs tend to be sad...

because we are always reminded, yeah,

that there's always bad in this world.

But at some point we will move forward.

[Aimee] I'm of the generation in Armenia currently

that was born in the early '90s,

so when the country was just becoming a country,

and it was the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

So we're very much a part of defining

what our country's new identity is.

And now we've adopted wine as our identity.

[soft piano music]

So it's really beautiful to be a part of.

[Armen Khachaturian] Wine has always been, to me,

it's always been this international language.

You can put a bottle of wine

and people of different cultures

and different nationalities and ages, it doesn't matter.

It brings everyone together.

When I met Vahe, he had a map.

He had all the different grapes

that were growing in all the different regions.

[Vahe] It's not a political map as much as wine map

of how viticulture started.

[Armen Khachaturian] And he said that a lot of these,

they didn't even know existed.

[Vahe] Over the last 8,000 years,

farmers have been selecting, selecting, selecting.

It's the kid in a candy store, literally.

[Armen Khachaturian] What this man is doing

to revive the historical significance of grape growing.

Fascinating.

It's a labor of love. It's a passion project.

He doesn't do this because someone's

paying him a lot of money.

He's doing this because it's his mark as an Armenian.

In this region, the red varietal that is the most famous

and I think has the most potential is Areni Noir.

Areni itself is not a thick-skinned grape,

so it doesn't have a lot of color, a lot of extension,

not unlike a Pinot Noir.

Yeah.

Areni also has a black pepper character,

has a little bit of pepperiness.

And the important thing for Areni in general

is that it needs to be ripe.

Unripe Areni is really hard.

It's not-- it's not ripe, it doesn't express itself.

But once it's ripe, it really expresses itself nicely.

Absolutely gorgeous.

It is possible that Areni is a very ancient grape.

And I always like to say that wine was not invented,

it was discovered.

[soft dramatic music]

[Dustin] So there's this cave in modern day Armenia

that was recently discovered,

and in it, a place to make wine.

Kind of a ancient winery, if you will.

[soft dramatic music continues]

[Boris] So we are going

to the inner part of the first gallery...

where the main ritual events took place

thousands of years ago.

The grape is a very mysterious plant.

It related with the cult of the sun

and people who lived here were worshiping the sun.

So you can see these clay structures,

and in the context of these clay structures,

you can see what is believed

to be the earliest wine making unit.

So the wine was pressed on this platform,

and with the help of gravity, it flowed down into the tank.

We dated it and it's 4,000 BC.

So there are not wine making units

known in the world like this,

so this is the oldest at the moment.

The clay structures contains animal remains

and as well parts of human body.

[soft dramatic music continues]

Those structures were not burials themselves,

but ritual basins,

which was reflecting a very complicated ritual

related with dying and reviving God.

It was deeply believed that wine

was connecting this world with the next world,

because people believed that everyone drinks wine,

people alive, people dead and gods.

So wine was kind of a beverage

who was opening gates to the next world.

[Vahe] There was a culture here.

And to put it in perspective, they were, I think,

discovering the wheel.

Can you imagine, like, it's the same period.

There was sophistication that they were making wine

while they were tinkering about how to make the wheel,

or they had made the wheel.

This was the time that humans were changing,

transforming from hunters and collectors

into those who could produce agricultural goods.

[Vahe] And these people who were agricultural people,

they see each year, nature is dying and reviving,

and these rituals were related with this,

death and revival.

Those who stayed here became also Armenians.

[Armen Khachaturian] During the time when you had Christianity, they made wine.

When Armenia was not ruled by Christians,

they stopped making wine.

There were times they'd go 300, 400 years

without making any wine,

and then they'd have to start up again.

And they've done that over and over.

The residues that are found in the amphora in that cave

have been carbon dated and analyzed genetically

and those residues carry the same grape variety

that exists today, over 6,000 years old.

[Carole] It is a strange irony that Armenia is starting over

with very ancient plant material.

And I'm not sure that's ironic as it is a connection.

[Dustin] Think about the level of pride

and excitement that you or you as a country

or certainly as a region might experience

if you've been kind of sitting

on that winning lottery ticket for thousands of years

and just not being able to cash it in.

And now, all of a sudden, someone had the balls

to go cash it in.

[Armen Khachaturian] Armenia was an independent country

for three years after World War I,

then it became part of USSR.

[Vahe] It disrupted the whole trajectory of viticulture,

or wine making, here, if you will.

It got interrupted for 70 or 80 years.

[soft upbeat music]

[machines whirring]

[Vahe] We are in Getap Winery.

It's an old-school winery.

Very classic Soviet.

[Armen Khachaturian] It wasn't modern wine making at all, whatsoever.

They would process the fruit fairly rough.

The machines were, you know, pretty industrial machines.

This is as Soviet as it will get.

You like it?

During the Soviet times,

each country had to produce something.

Georgia made wine, Bulgaria made wine.

Armenia was told to make fortified wine.

The Soviet Union decided you guys stop doing wine,

you do brandy.

[Vahe] So Armenia became the cognac country for the Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union was making brandy

and planting vineyards for large scale production,

they wanted flat land.

All the vineyards that were planted pre-Soviet times

were left untouched.

It just so happens that 120 years ago

we had Armenians that planted Areni.

So that's why we have these vineyards

that essentially have been untouched for 120 years.

[Vahe] So it kind of slipped through the cracks,

kind of thing, you know.

[Armen Khachaturian] Areni Noir, it's such a complex varietal.

I think it can rival some of the best in-- in the world.

[Paul] Areni has the possibility

of bringing a lot of international recognition

to a country that has a great and rich history.

[Dustin] As wine has become more and more popular globally,

making high quality wine has almost become sort of a seal

of your cultural significance.

[Paul] I think Areni as a wine

could do kind of what Malbec did for Argentina.

When I think about Argentina, for instance,

the first thing comes to mind is great steak and great wine.

[upbeat music]

Malbec was a sleeper as a variety.

So all we did was to say, "Well,

what if we could grow this grape, you know,

just make a high quality vineyard?

How would it perform?"

And so that's what we tried.

And when we did that,

we were like shocked how good the wine was.

[man] Paul Hobbs turned out to be

one of the most influential winemakers in the world.

He was vital in shaping the wine culture

that we see in Argentina today.

[Paul] Malbec solidified Argentina

as a world-class producing region.

Having a variety that you're known for,

you're the world leader, I think is a huge asset.

When Malbec took hold, it infected everything.

Tourism, restaurants, hotels bloomed,

or even exploded in the region.

That's one of the reasons I love working

in these kind of places,

because there's always the possibility

of helping either resurrect or create something afresh.

In the case of Armenia, yeah,

I think Areni as a wine could have enormous power.

[Aimee] Paul Hobbs has a bit of a reputation in wine

as a prospector and recently he was one

of the first outsiders to go to Armenia

to make wine with the Areni grape.

[Paul] This is a 2016 version.

This grape clearly stood out in terms of quality.

Beautiful color, this freshness.

And then it finishes, right,

and you can feel the nice grip

and you get the feeling of the mineral, chalky soils

-from the sites that these are grown. -Mm-Hm.

With all this dynamic activity going on in Armenia,

do you feel any kind of pressure?

Because it's really gonna fall on the shoulders

of people like you that are gonna carry this thing

and make it to be whatever it's going to be.

[soft dramatic music]

[Armen Sarkissian] This is a nation that lived on the crossroad,

always surrounded by different nations.

Not always friends.

Sometimes very hostile.

But that created a new DNA in these people,

which is a DNA of a survivor.

[dramatic orchestral music]

[Aimee] When the Soviet Union dissolved,

when USSR dissolved... borders were drawn.

Repeating once again, our top story,

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev

has been removed from power and there are tanks now

in the streets of Moscow.

He has declared a state of emergency

in individual localities.

It is not clear what that means.

[Aimee] There were Armenians and Azeris

living in different areas.

The borders were redefined for Armenia

to be an independent country and Azerbaijan,

and that's when the conflict started.

[fire crackling]

[Vahe] So it's really kind of a country, you know, at war.

It's always a state of war.

There's always soldiers coming, soldiers going.

We might even see a column of tanks going, you know,

it's very common.

Because this is the road

that goes to Artsakh, or Nagorno Karabakh.

So stuff is always moving from here, there.

It's the main road.

See these things are all to protect

from sniper fire.

When Vahe came and wanted to make sparkling in Armenia,

he had always dreamt of making bubbles.

And he came to Armenia

and he went to different vineyard sites and said,

"Where is the best place to make sparkling?"

And they happened upon Khachik.

[soft dramatic music]

[Vahe] Khachik is a village

at around 1,800 meters above sea level.

So that represents

the highest elevation vineyards in Armenia.

[soft dramatic music continues]

Every year, I buy all the grapes of the village.

Always. The only people that buy are us.

Whether it be 50 tons, 80 tons, 100 tons.

I have promised them and every year I buy it from them.

We'll drive now past the military base,

and then we get to our vineyards.

And our vineyards are 500 meters from the Azeri border.

[Vahe] And I want to build my winery there.

So when I got an architect, a structural engineer,

I asked to build that could withstand, you know, mortars.

Yeah, yeah.

Vahe, my father wants to build a bombproof-- bombproof cellar.

[Vahe] So that my cellar wouldn't be, you know,

short of a bunker buster,

whatever those big bombs are, you know.

Every time he says that, I'm like, "Will we need it?"

[Vahe] And it was gonna be

four to five times more expensive

because of the amount of concrete we had to pour.

I mean, it's a little surreal.

But if we're gonna age our Keush up here,

1,500 meters from the border

and any war breaks out, then yeah.

I'm a little concerned, but I'm not gonna run away.

These are our vineyards, this is our land,

so we're gonna make wine no matter what.

[Jonathan] The first war, which started in 1988,

the peace accord was signed more or less in '94.

That brutal conflict was won by the Armenians. Hands down.

They really-- the Azeri army got a serious beating

and took heavy losses.

For the Azeris, it's a question of revenge as well.

They claim that it's their territory.

Now, if a country claims that this is their territory,

then we can go back in time indefinitely and say,

"Well, actually, Armenians were there way before you were."

The Turks didn't come before the early 11th century.

The Armenians had been there many hundreds of years before,

so if you go into that logic, then, well,

Armenians, that's their land. It's not Turkish land.

Of course, the reality on the ground is quite different.

[bombs exploding]

[Aimee] Women and children were evacuated a week ago

and most of the farmers have reported to the front lines

to defend the village.

We're preparing for air raids.

[soft dramatic music]

[Jonathan] This war is very dangerous.

Not only just at the front line

when you are there with the troops.

I mean, yeah, you're getting shelled constantly

and you don't know if the next bomb is for you or not.

But it was very dangerous on the roads.

We knew there are drones everywhere.

It's like having a giant sniper up in the air.

The difference that the sniper gets tired,

these drones don't.

They could keep circling for 24 hours, replace.

I mean, it's nonstop.

A lot of people that I met who stayed,

they stayed because it was their home,

either the house or the land, or because they had cattle.

Also, the grapes, you know, the people who were making wine.

[soft dramatic music continues]

The vineyards sit right between the Armenian military base

and the Azeri military base.

[Vahe] It is around a half a mile,

maybe a mile maximum from their post to our border.

So it is in a direct line of fire, the vineyards.

For the most part, we've never had a problem.

There was not much happening in the last 30 or some years,

but because now it's a full-blown war...

people are hesitating whether they should harvest.

[Armen Khachaturian] The harvest date is the most important date

in the entire process of making wine.

Winemakers have to wait until the perfect moment

to pick the fruit.

And if you miss the window, you can't make wine that year.

It is exact time to do the harvest,

probably either today, tomorrow,

the next three, four days is the window

before the sugars go up too much.

It is potentially 30,000 bottles

of blanc de noirs from that village.

It's not about money, I think,

it's about the work that they did

that they can't harvest and it has to stay on the vine.

[Aimee] It's their year that they've spent, you know,

growing these grapes and they wanna see it go into fruition.

[Vahe] It's kind of a dilemma.

Do we risk going to the fields

and perhaps aggravate the situation

by them fighting on them,

or we let go of the fruit and let it stand in the vineyard?

First of all, the road to Khachik

at the moment is closed for military personnel only.

So if they were to allow us to go and harvest the grapes,

that would be a very strategic military decision

at the moment.

We can't go at night with lights.

You know, they have snipers,

they have certain technologies

that can see you when you harvest the grapes.

So we're talking about a completely different ballgame.

This is a war of our right to live peacefully in our land.

[soldiers shouting]

And the vineyards actually are a pretty big part of that.

It's not a new thing that the vineyards

have acted like borders where farmers stay

and they defend their land.

Look, we can pull it off.

[Aimee] It's gonna be a day-to-day decision.

[dramatic orchestral music]

No, I'm calm. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's not a fake calm, it's a real calm.

Vahe, Vahe is, [laughs]

you would think I understand how he's thinking.

He does well when there's something that needs to happen.

He has war experience, so it's a little different.

He can see this from a different perspective.

He's very much a leader and a lot of people around us

are looking at him to be a leader.

Actually, I do better in times of difficulty

than in times of peace.

For some reason, I'm better suited to take charge

when things are out of your control.

I think it's best. Yeah, let's-- okay.

[Vahe speaking Armenian]

Okay.

[Aimee] Usually we see a lot more trucks with grapes.

It's mid-harvest season,

but it looks really calm right now.

[Vahe] It's becoming more and more real, by the way.

It's coming, you know, closer.

And now we know we're hearing about people

that we know got hurt, injured or died, you know?

[soft dramatic music]

So freaking quiet.

Yeah?

[Aimee] Yeah, it's almost too quiet.

[Vahe] Yeah, exactly. The famous calm before the storm.

Hopefully the storm never comes here.

[soft dramatic music continues]

[Aimee] Here we go.

[soft dramatic music continues]

Okay.

[Vahe] You got it?

[soft dramatic music continues]

[Aimee] Okay.

[soft dramatic music continues]

The plan is each farmer and their plot

will have three, four people harvesting.

Yeah, basically, rather than the whole village harvest--

They do plot by plot slowly, slowly.

So that there's no big concentration, you know?

Yeah.

[Vahe] Do you know they used to plant, in the Roman Empire,

they used to plant vineyards on the borders of the empire

because they figured any community that has vineyards,

they will never run away because they've invested so much.

This is what? 120, 130, 140 years.

It's been-- to let go of this without putting up a fight,

it's almost impossible.

Yeah, that's the white line.

You see the white line? That's the--

-The road looking thing. -[Vahe] Yeah.

And that's their post.

Our fields go 300 meters from their post.

I mean, people farm, they're gutsy, man.

They've seen war, they've seen so much

that then farming there is, you know,

it's a normal day-to-day thing, honey.

-They're used to it. -They don't care.

Yeah.

Do you know another beauty is that you see,

we stand right, Ararat, you see?

That mountain is a symbol.

Symbol of who we are, what we've done,

from Noah to this day.

Yeah, of course, let's leave religion

on the side for a minute, but, you know,

had it been Noah and whatnot, it's a remarkable story

you'll tell to your kids one day.

I'm telling you now.

[soft dramatic music continues]

It will be a historic moment for the village,

for the country in saying in spite of it,

we did it, you know?

Even if it's 7,000 bottles, who cares, you know?

It's what that 7,000 represent.

[dramatic triumphant orchestral music]

[soft dramatic vocalizing]

[singers singing in foreign language]

[Jonathan] After a couple of weeks,

they knew the war was going really badly for them.

Maybe they wouldn't express it publicly,

but inside, they knew they had lost.

There's no question about it.

They lost quite a bit of territory, too.

[singers singing in foreign language]

[Vahe] We truly thought we would win this one.

And then slowly we came to the belief

that we were going to lose this one.

And we did lose it, honestly.

[Aimee] We lost three major wineries,

several large-scale vineyard projects,

and the majority of the oak forest

that are used to make our barrels.

[Vahe] It's kind of a rough one,

seeing all that lost, you know?

We'll pick up the pieces and we'll move forward.

The people who stick it out through thick and thin

respect the vine, respect the struggle

the vine has to go through,

respect the age to which the vines live

and respect the produce of the vine,

which is just a bunch of grapes,

which they, through their intelligence,

manage to turn into wine.

Wine is a product which can be sold across the world.

That's a great advantage.

[Dustin] If you are a country that produces very high quality wine

and become globally recognized for it,

it can really help to market you as a country,

can show people that you should be seen on the global stage

alongside these other places in the world

that make high quality wine.

[Aimee] I'm gonna take the Areni to Napa Valley

and see what the world thinks of it.

[plane engine whooshing]

Getting the message out is the toughest part.

There's a story that has to be told.

[Aimee] Not many people have heard of Areni

and not many people have heard of Armenia.

[Dustin] First of all, the wine has to be good.

You gotta get people to try it, to taste it.

But it's not a wine that anybody's familiar with.

[Carole] This is a first for me.

I don't think I've ever had an Armenian wine.

I've never had the grape variety before,

so I don't really know what to expect.

[Aimee] Everyone's, at first, a little hesitant.

[DLynn] You've got words on here that I can't pronounce.

[Steve] How do you market it outside of Armenia?

If you're trying to sell something that nobody can say,

that's a bit of an obstacle.

[Steve] Because you know what you get in Napa,

you know what you get in Bordeaux,

you know what you get in Burgundy or La Morra.

Yep.

[Steve] With Caucasus oak,

is it at faster growing or slower growing?

Caucasian, it's slow growth.

It's very delicate grape.

It's very thin-skinned, tight clustered.

[Dlynn] So what's the viticulture like?

How are you harvesting these grapes? What, what--

Yeah, yeah.

Viticulture is, yeah.

[Carole] Is there a problem with winter cold?

[Steve] Do you do any special winterization,

burying the trunks or anything like that?

We don't do any of that.

Areni is grown in volcanic soil.

It's all volcanic soil, high elevation.

The vineyards range from 1,300 meters

all the way up to 1,700 meters.

Those vineyards are first

or second highest elevation vineyards

in the Northern Hemisphere.

Do the local skirmishes affect when you can harvest?

[Aimee] We don't have certifications yet,

we don't have appellations.

We're at the very beginning.

We're just starting to export, really.

No one was making wine in Armenia

and Armenia has only been a country for around 20 years.

Oh, now I'm gonna have to go look at a map.

Yeah. Figure this all out.

-[Steve] Should we try it? -So let's do it. Yeah.

-Let's taste. -[man] I think we shall.

Thanks so much.

It smells lovely.

It's very exotic.

[Aimee] A lot of people try to compare it or place it.

Like, "Oh, Areni tastes like Pinot Noir,"

but it's not a Pinot Noir.

It's a completely different grape.

[soft orchestral music]

[soft orchestral music continues]

I don't think-- I-I don't think that it should be compared

to other grapes, personally.

This wine is totally singular.

[soft orchestral music continues]

Well, I really like it.

[DLynn] I love the wine. The wine is pleasurable.

It's got great acid, it's got great tannin.

This is a quality wine. I really dig it.

It has crazy balance.

This one, you could call this a noble variety,

if you were to use that term.

It has, it's the whole package.

[Aimee] It should be a noble grape.

I mean, the grape is one of the oldest grape varieties

in the world and somehow it still survives to this day.

[Carole] The story of an ancient land, you know,

with such an ancient, ancient wine culture.

I think it's a winner.

[Vahe] This would be the closing of a circle.

It's originated here

and now it's coming back with a vengeance.

[Aimee] Wine can be used as a form of diplomacy,

can be used as a form of peacemaking, of negotiations.

Wine can be used as many things.

[Vahe] She can, if not the world,

she can change parts of the world through wine

and she can make it a little bit better

because she's... she's my daughter.

[soft music]

[people chattering]

[Aimee] It's the harvest season in Armenia.

We're harvesting grapes from five different regions,

so it's definitely hectic here at the winery.

[Vahe] I like the excitement of the new.

The thrill of the chase.

I think it's my character.

I'm not irresponsible,

but I like the high of doing something new, you know,

and maybe getting away with it.

The idea came to me to make first wine from Iran.

The whole idea started because we have the map behind me.

Iran is a critical part of it.

When you drink wine, the majority,

ninety-nine-point-something percent of what you drink

is from a species of vine called vitis vinifera.

That is Pinot Noir, that is Chardonnay, that is Gamay,

that's Shiraz, that's Cabernet Sauvignon,

that's Cabernet Franc.

It all comes back to vitis vinifera.

A lot of experts believe that the origin

of vitis vinifera comes from Iran.

[Vahe] Well, we have two neighbors that are friendly.

So one is Georgia, which is fine.

And then we have Iran, which we get along very nicely,

but no one else in the world gets along, you know.

It's interesting that the Armenians

and the Persians get along for a multitude of reasons.

One of them is because they are alike.

They were enemies, but they were also allies

that went back and forth since the fifth century, really.

They have a common history.

[soft piano music]

[Moe] Maysara is an ancient Persian word

meaning house of wine.

"May" means wine and "Sara" is house.

[soft piano music continues]

Initially when we started owning a vineyard and a winery,

we made it very clear to our kids

that they should pursue their own dreams,

but I am so excited and thrilled

for it to become a family business.

I have to say, it didn't seem as much

whatever you girls wanna do, go do.

It was always expected,

but it could also be that we put that pressure on ourselves,

right, where we wanted to kind of perform,

seeing what they've done.

I mean, they escaped from a country with whatever they had

and I think that it does hold us to a different standard.

I mean, I'm American, I was born here,

but I'm so proud of my roots.

I'm so proud that I'm Iranian.

Of course, we get people asking,

well, in your country you don't have wine culture

or you're Muslim, how come you have a winery?

[Naseem] I think people often, when they think Persia

or they think Iran,

they think of the regime that's going on with religion

and then they pull away being like, well, they can't drink wine.

And it's just like, let's go back to history

and see where it all started.

It came from our home country.

[Moe] In the western world,

we mainly talk about

the flavor, aroma, acidity.

But in our Persian culture, in our poetry,

it's mainly talked about the spirit of wine.

Wine was considered as like a sun's radiance

in a liquid form.

It was a very sacred thing.

[Vahe] What happened was that there was

a religious revolution in 1979.

The country became an Islamic republic.

So immediately, use of alcohol was banned.

You know, you hear a lot of these stories

of these Persians fleeing when the revolution happened.

They fled after the revolution.

It was even harder to get out.

They came with what they had on their back and, you know,

my mom was eight months pregnant.

-It was difficult. -It was really hard, yeah.

[Moe] Of course they closed down the wineries,

but before the revolution, there was about like 300 wineries.

But a lot of those vineyards, they got demolished.

It's unfortunate that when you get a lot of politics

and religion and things like that,

they forget history and it automatically goes to a place

of just like negative, bad, right?

They took something that was so important

to my parents' culture

and so it makes-- it makes it hard, you know, so.

[tense music]

Let's put the show on the road.

-Let's see. -As they say.

[Vahe] So tomorrow, I'll fly to Tehran.

I've never been to Tehran.

Tuesday, Wednesday, we'll be in the grape region.

This part is Kurdistan. You see, it's all mountains,

-and we'll get the grapes from there. -Mm-hm.

I'm looking for Rasheh grapes.

The harvest has started already,

so it's going to be treasure trove, you know.

The problem I need to be careful

is that we're going to go around here

with lots of cameras, drones and whatnot.

And that, you know, it might attract attention

as to why would anybody video.

So wine is going to be a distant idea

that we know but not everyone to know.

Why now?

So at some point it's the right time.

You know, it's the right time to do something.

And you know, wine hasn't been made for 40 years.

It's something new.

Yeah, you'll come visit me in jail, okay?

It'll be fine, yeah.

You're okay. It'll be okay.

[soft dramatic music]

[Aimee] He's been talking about this for four, five years.

I remember every year during harvest season, he says,

"Should we get the grapes? Should we bring the grapes in?

Should we go find grapes in Iran?"

It's a state with very heavy surveillance

that happens on a day-to-day basis.

I've had friends that, they got caught drinking

and they wanted to take him out to the street

and slash him with belts.

[soft dramatic music continues]

[Vahe] So somehow we managed enough contacts and people

that now it's gonna be a reality.

I don't know what to expect,

but something's going to happen, let's put it that way.

[soft dramatic music continues]

We land in Iran and it's nothing

like I've experienced before other countries.

There is security concerns.

It is a police state because there's so many rules

that people have to obey,

so you have to have a lot of people to enforce those rules.

You asked me if I'm nervous.

It takes a lot to make me nervous.

[soft dramatic music]

It's one thing being in prisons,

another thing being in Iranian prison.

[Aimee] This is gonna be the first time

anyone is making wine with modern technology

from these Iranian grapes

and that is just too hard to pass up, honestly.

It's just too exciting. It's very risky.

[Vahe] I don't look at the risk, I look only at the rewards.

If we don't take risks in life, what's the point?

I'm gonna spend the day in Tehran.

I'll figure out which are the grapes

that we would like to get.

Hello, nice to meet you. How are you?

Yes, you want some jewelry? [laughs]

They might stop us, ask us questions.

Say we're doing a documentary on grapes, DNA,

origins of grapes, whatever.

-We'll make it up, something. -[dramatic orchestral music]

[soft dramatic music]

Now, you know, we are playing with fire a little bit.

Nice to meet you. Pleasure.

It's so good to meet you. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure here.

Anyway, so, my first time in Tehran.

First time. Looks okay, I'll come back again, I think.

It's very nice.

So you will translate?

How's your English? It's okay?

You understand quite well?

Yeah? Okay.

So the purpose is for me to buy grapes,

maybe 10, 15 ton of grapes

for us for do research,

do some microvinification.

Try to see, you know, how Iranian grapes are.

I guess you must produce a lot of fruit, yeah,

grapes in Iran, yeah?

So my interest, I want to see what varieties is available,

what we can get.

Maybe we drive around, we see some vineyards.

If you have a supplier there, we can go see them,

see the grape and we can purchase,

if you have anybody in Kermanshah.

We know historically grapes were grown there

for thousands of years

because it's one of the birthplaces of the vine.

Where are the grapes?

I need vineyards.

[wine merchant speaking in foreign language]

This is Western Azerbaijan or something, right?

[Liaison] Yeah, and that is Kermanshah.

[Vahe] Kermanshah?

Does it have a name, this grape?

-[Liaison] Rasheh, Rasheh. -Rasheh, Rasheh? Okay.

[wine merchant speaking in foreign language]

Fifteen ton, 10 cent makes no difference.

One thousand dollar, 500.

[wine merchant speaking in foreign language]

So tomorrow, where can we go tomorrow? Tomorrow?

[speaking in foreign language]

Here?

[merchant] Over to Sanandaj, and here over to Mahabad.

[Vahe] From here, they are three hours, so five hours?

[merchant] I think I have a new road, but I don't...

[Vahe] So we decided not to wait and drive to Sanandaj.

Here we are going to the hills in Kurdistan

trying to find grapes,

and they didn't know if there were grapes.

And there was one point we kept driving, driving.

I wasn't seeing any vineyards,

like what the hell am I going to do

if there's no grapes in this goddamn country?

[liaison speaking in foreign language]

No grapes? Grapes, no grapes?

[translator] He says six kilometers.

-Maybe. -No, no, three kilometers.

-Maybe, or there is grapes? -Yes, there is.

[people chattering]

Thank you. Vahe.

And this fellow, he's Kurdish,

he's gonna accompany us to a place

where he knows where those grapes are grown.

But he insisted on having tea, so we're having tea.

Yes, shall we have tea?

[people chattering]

You drink a lot of tea, huh?

You don't?

[liaison] Iranians drinking tea,

Kurdistan doesn't have a good tea.

Yeah, they grow it here?

Smuggle it, yeah.

[liaison] The good tea.

They smuggle tea?

Why?

They just take it in the car, no? No?

[liaison] No, no.

If they wanna smuggle, smuggle something better, no?

[people speaking in foreign language]

What?

[liaison] He says if you want some place for resting--

No, no, it's okay. Yeah, it's okay.

We want vineyards.

We want grapes, vineyards. Yeah.

[speaking in foreign language]

[soft piano music]

[Vahe] Slowly, we started seeing vineyards.

So you can see there's a piece of vineyard there.

There's an impossible piece of vineyard over there.

I have no idea why would anybody

want to put a vineyard there,

but I guess they don't have a choice.

We'll drive another half an hour, an hour

and see what we need.

How do they farm this land, man?

Okay, so I'm gonna go.

Let me go.

[soft music continues]

[Vahe grunts]

[Vahe panting]

[Vahe laughs]

Oh, fuck.

Sorry.

[Vahe panting]

Where's the vineyard? There?

[Vahe panting]

[soft orchestral music]

These are definitely ready.

Perfect, yeah.

I'm gonna go talk to the owner and see how much he has

and what he wants to sell.

[soft orchestral music continues]

[Aimee] When it comes to wine, he's always, I think,

been at the right place at the right time.

He does all this out of pure excitement

and seeing a boundary and wanting to push it.

His ability to be inspiring is contagious.

[people chattering]

[soft orchestral music continues]

[Vahe] Grapes cannot grow anywhere for 8,000 years

and not have something special.

You know, it's something beautiful,

and if people can't see beauty, it's their problem,

it's not my problem.

[soft orchestral music continues]

For 40 years, no modern wine was made in Iran,

so as if time has stood still.

Now we're trying to catch up,

get the grapes, make the wine and see what they have.

For a winemaker, it's the holy grail.

We used professional people

that truck between Iran and Armenia.

I'm not saying they bribed or they didn't bribe,

but I'm saying they figured it out how to bring it.

Of course, we have to put a different name on the paperwork

so that it crosses the border with relative ease.

Shipping grapes for three days, four days

is not something common.

But because of the circumstances, we don't have a choice.

You know, I can't sit there in Kurdistan and make wine.

At least not yet.

Things could go wrong.

I'm hoping that everything is perfect, but you never know.

This is a first for us.

[Aimee] We're doing something that maybe some people

have dreamt of but never thought that it would be possible.

[dramatic orchestral music]

[Vahe] So far... so far, so good.

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

It's gonna have a huge impact.

It's going to open talks,

people are going to write articles.

Not because of the wine, but because of the possibility.

For Aimee, my daughter,

you know, there's a big question mark.

[Aimee] I am very concerned.

We don't know how the government is going to react.

There isn't a precedent for something like this.

[Vahe] Perhaps the Iranian government might not like it.

I don't know what they can do.

I'm not going to not do it

because it might happen, you know?

[speaks indistinctly]

-Twenty-two? -Yeah, 22.

-Twenty-two. -Exactly 22.

Now we have something special, I think.

-We can start the process. -Cool.

-Let's get it done, yeah? -Yellah.

Okay, yellah.

[Vahe] It was risk worth taking, you know, so we'll see.

She's fine. She'll be okay.

[Aimee] I think it's a wait-and-see kind of thing.

[soft piano music]

[tense jazz music]

[Vahe] We bottled the wine and we had to get a pulse

and we wanted to put it in front of professionals

to see what we had achieved.

[Aimee] I think it represents

-the Persian culture very well. -Yeah, it's very nice.

Came out beautifully, it's wonderful.

Yeah.

-Yeah. -I like it, yeah.

I'm sure people will like it, too.

Before we release the wine,

we can know what kind of product we have

and how to approach it and how to release it

and what we're going to do next,

and New York is the place to do it.

New York City is the most dynamic.

Top restaurants and the top sommeliers.

Well, I'm very nervous because it's one thing

you make the wine, you taste it during its progress

and you become very acquainted to it.

And then you can be often biased,

so it's very important not to be biased.

So that's the anxiety, if anything, I have

and butterflies right before we taste,

because, "What if, what if," in my mind.

[soft dramatic music]

I've been carrying these things.

I'll put it down before I break it.

[Sabato] All right, it made it all this way.

Amazing.

[soft dramatic music continues]

-Hi. -Oh, sorry.

Dustin, good to see you. How's it going?

-Good, you? -Pleasure.

-Nice to meet you. -Good to meet you.

-Lovely show. -Thank you.

Thanks very much. Yeah, absolutely.

-Looking forward to tasting with you. -Very excited to meet you.

You've come a long way to get here.

So, first bottle, you'll be the first to taste it,

outside of Armenia.

-Armenia-- -Wow.

Where we made at the winery, we've tasted it.

But outside you will be the first, so--

-This has come a long way. -I'm a bit apprehensive.

I don't know, but I'm guessing

it will do just fine, you know?

You're a tough judge, I'm guessing.

It's not like my friends or something,

so your input will be, you know, because it's--

-I've heard the story. -No one's tasted it,

so I'm apprehensive, will people like it,

and the whole journey to make something like this.

-Right. -And then you're kind of like,

was it all worth it, you know, so.

Right, well, what do you think?

Yeah, no, I think of course, it's worth it.

-Yeah. -Hopefully,

it's the first bottle,

actually without over dramatizing it,

it will be the first bottle of fine Iranian wine

-ever made in the last 40, 50-- -Wow.

Forty-some years.

And before that there was no technology

-to make wines like this. -Sure.

So this would be the first bottle made,

modern style wine in the history of Iran,

let's put it that way.

So for what it's worth, we tasted it

and I am hoping, I'm hoping we are onto something.

[Dustin] Now what do you hope to accomplish with this wine?

-Do you have some-- -This wine, just start curiosity,

I think, you know?

You know, the romantic in me says maybe the government

might allow a little bit of wine to be made

within a decade or maybe two decades.

Things will open up and we'll be able to taste more wines.

Well, it's a way more humble answer than I was expecting.

-[Vahe] Yeah. -I mean, you could do a lot with this thing.

-Yeah. -Change the whole world.

-If you don't mind opening it. -I'd be happy to.

-Yeah. -Thanks.

Honored to be the first one to taste this with you.

I'm honored to taste it with you also.

Do you wanna do the honors?

-May I? -Yeah, of course, of course.

So tell me about the label here.

Okay.

It's from the Iranian motifs.

This is very typical.

Molana is a very famous poet, Rumi.

-Rasheh is the grape. -Yeah.

Sardasht is the region.

And here I added a little bit of--

-I saw that, yeah. -[Vahe laughs]

-[Sabato] All right. -It's the first bottling.

-Moment of truth, as they say. -All right.

Honored to be able to serve you your wine.

[Vahe] My heartbeat is 120.

[both laughing]

And my misery, so you can taste the wine.

Good fruit, nice.

[Sabato] I'm sorry I don't have

any Reidel Rasheh glasses here for you.

No, no, I don't-- [laughs] It's going to be a while.

-[Dustin] Slightly nervous? -A little bit, yeah.

More, I am definitely nervous. Yeah.

-Cheers, sorry. -Thank you, this is wild.

Thank you. Thanks for having-- having me.

It will open up a bit. I think it's cold because...

So it's fresh, nice, bright fruit.

-It smells great. -Yeah.

A nice little black cherry, I think, you know.

I'll let you do the description, too.

Mostly cherry, I think.

Good fruit. Good...

It's for you to say, honestly, because I've had it a few times.

[soft dramatic music]

You know, it's hard to place, to compare.

-It's really good. -Yeah, yeah.

-It's really good. -You like it?

-Yeah, it's very good. -Thank you.

-Yeah. -Thank you.

-Cheers. -Cheers.

-Thank you. -Well done.

-Thank you. -Wow.

This is by far the best Iranian wine

made in Armenia that I've ever had.

[Vahe laughs] Thank you.

Thank you for sharing this.

But no, in, in all seriousness, it's very unique.

I'm thinking about the people that harvested that

and it's just yesterday they were harvesting table grapes

and today they're harvesting this,

but here we are in New York City

drinking the fruits of their labor and yours,

and it's amazing when you think about how many people

are involved in producing this and the worlds

and lives that they live to put it together

to tell the story in the glass.

It's pretty, pretty amazing.

You know, there's these moments where I've been very lucky

to drink a lot of great wine.

And sometimes, you know, you're drinking something

that means so much historically,

or it's so old or it's such a rare experience

that that part kind of takes over, you know,

and the wine itself might just be kind of so so.

-Yeah, yeah. -You know?

-This is very cool because-- -It has both.

This has both. Yeah.

[Sabato] I mean, I have friends that are Iranian

that live in the United States

and they've never tasted wine like this.

And so I can only imagine what this is like for them,

for, you know, having family or knowing an appreciation

for where they came from to be able to drink this

with people they love that have endured a lot to be here,

so I think that's really special from that standpoint.

I think it's great for the wine community,

wine loving community,

and then of course the Iranian community

who haven't had Iranian wine

since they left Iran or any Iranian

in the last 40-some years.

[Naseem] Hey, can I have you?

Follow me.

Follow me up top.

Well, they have something for you.

Oh, my God.

You wanna read it?

Yeah.

-Do you know what this is? -Glasses.

Do you know what it is?

Is it from Armenia?

Keep going, keep reading it.

-Iranian... -Dad, they've--

this is the first wine that's been made out of Iran.

They smuggled the grapes.

-Took it-- -That's amazing.

How do you feel?

Emotional.

[Moe and Naseem chuckle]

-That's so great. -[voice breaking] Yeah.

So this is-- this is history coming back.

Thanks.

You wanna open it?

Sure.

-Dad, I'm gonna cry. -[Moe laughs]

I can't even see right now.

[soft orchestral music]

So, that daughter and father,

they smuggled in the grapes to Armenia

and they...

From Shiraz or?

Sardasht, yeah.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

Yeah, I used to pass through that town

-almost every week with your mom. -[Naseem chuckles]

[Moe] They have great grapes in there.

[Naseem] Yeah, so...

You wanna pour it? I'll give you the honors.

[soft piano music]

-Cheers. -Cheers.

Be salamati.

-You could smell the dirt. -Mm-hmm.

[Naseem] "This wine was crafted to transcend time and place.

Named after the prolific Persian poet,

the wine resembles its namesake emphasis

on purity and elegance.

It is fresh and playful on the palate

with a strong sense of provenance

due to the terroir the grapes were grown in.

Rumi was an experimental innovator among the Persian poets

who had a mystical appeal and bold poetic forms.

This wine echoes just that."

That is so great.

Molana, yeah.

I really smell the place.

I'm serious.

[Naseem] Well, they did a great job.

[soft dramatic music]

[Naseem laughs]

It's like bringing everyone together again.

And that Armenians make great, great wines.

They're just known for it throughout the history, actually.

I really feel not only very honored, but very emotional.

They did a great job.

You know, I'm even-- [laughs]

I'm gonna drink quite a bit of this tonight.

Well, hopefully, one day we'll have our wine in there.

Well, at least we can share some with the family.

[soft orchestral music]

[Aimee] For thousands of years, bottles of wine

have graced our dinner tables on a regular basis.

Common dinner table topics that are not to be discussed

are religion, politics.

But the truth is that bottle of wine

sitting in the middle of that table

came from religion and survived politics

to get to that place.

[Vahe] There is a certain poetic beauty of continuing something

that people started 6,000, 7,000 years ago.

And if you don't have that kind of poetic beauty

in your life, what's the purpose, really?

[dramatic orchestral music]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]