Somm: Cup of Salvation

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.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Tehran - Mm-hm.

And spend the day in Tehran seeing the wine merchant.

Checking out the grapes.

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.

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.

This is just like one of the wildest things

I think that could ever happen in wine.

You okay?

Um well, it's not...

I'll call you from jail.

- - Okay?

- Please don't. -

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

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.

- 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.

It's the most dangerous wine in the world.

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?

Cute, huh?

Oh, Aimee would kill for it.

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

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.

She really loves it.

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

This is about 100 years old.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We lost 1.5 million Armenians.

Fifty percent of the Armenian people.

My grandfather was a survivor.

He lost his entire family of 17.

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.

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.