When Wine Becomes Crucial to Cultural Identity

“The Soviet Union said, ‘You guys don’t do wine, you do brandy,’” Mr. Keushguerian said. As he tells it in the film, the Soviets forced growers to abandon their hillside vineyards and the ancient varieties they used for wine. New vineyards were planted in the flat areas, where farming could be industrialized, with the grapes the Soviets preferred for brandy.

“The old vineyards stayed,” Aimee Keushguerian, whose birth coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union, says. “They were essentially untouched for 120 years. Now we’ve adopted wine as our identity.”

The Keushguerians have been reviving old vineyards and exploring the ancient varieties, among them areni, one of the oldest known wine grapes, which has become something of a symbol for the revival of winemaking in Armenia.

During the filming of “Cup of Salvation” in Armenia in 2020, war breaks out between Armenia and Azerbaijan. A key vineyard is situated directly in the line of fire, as harvest approaches. In the film, the Keushguerians must decide whether to risk harvesting the grapes or stay clear of the vineyard, losing the harvest, which would be both an economic and a cultural blow.

Finally, wearing bulletproof vests, they assess the situation and proceed, thankfully without casualties.

Iran, too, once had a thriving wine industry, particularly among Kurds and Zoroastrians. It ceased after the Islamic revolution in 1979, and hundreds of wine-producing facilities were destroyed. But some of the old vineyards survived, particularly in hard-to-reach hillside areas, with their produce consumed as table grapes.