Unlock the secrets of a family legacy that intertwines the ancient allure of Persian culture with the timeless art of winemaking, as Moe and Naseem Momtazi from Maysara Winery share their story. Their biodynamic vineyard in Oregon is a testament to their Persian roots and a celebration of the sun’s nourishment and the sacred role of wine in pre-Islamic Persia.
Join us as we explore three distinctly different Pinot Noirs and discuss the art of pairing with foods and ingredients to amply flavors. From caviar & chocolate to fried chicken and the rich flavors of Persian cuisine including fesenjoon, we cover tips for hosting memorable wine pairings.
Reference to Podcast Episode 127: Persian Beer with Zahra
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Opening and closing music composed by Amir Etemadzadeh, www.amirschoolofmusic.com
Podcast production by Alvarez Audio
Transcription:
Intro:
This is Modern Persian Food, a culinary podcast for today’s food enthusiast. We talk about classic Persian flavors, modern recipes, and embracing culture and identity through food. I’m Bita, and I’m also Beata. Welcome to our show.
0:00:26 – Bita
Hi friends, welcome to Episode 163. Today we’re in for a treat. We’re uncorking delicious stories and savoring wisdom from the Momtazis, a family deeply rooted in wine. After leaving Iran in the 1970s, Moe and Flora Momtazi embarked on a new adventure in Oregon, transforming their landscape into a thriving, bio-dynamic sanctuary, the Momtazi Vineyard and Maysara Winery. The Momtazi’s journey is intertwined with that of their three daughters, who now lend their talents to the family legacy. Moe, guided by his grandparents’ farm wisdom and holistic practices, cultivates magic in the soil, while daughter Naseem leads the charge as the savvy sales mastermind. Moe and Naseem, thank you so much for joining us and for your time today. Welcome to the show.
0:01:30 – Naseem
Thank you. Thank you for having us.
0:01:32 – Moe
It was our pleasure.
0:01:33 – Bita
And as always, we’re joined by the lovely Bita joon, co-host and partner of the Modern Persian Food podcast. Hey, Bita joon!
0:01:41 – Beata
Hi there. Hi, everyone. Naseem joon, Moe joon, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re excited to have you and your winery on the show. We haven’t had a episode dedicated to Persian wine yet. So this is a first for us and we’re super excited. And it’s February 2024, so we want to celebrate love this month. And we’re hoping to talk about some of the Persian wines and maybe pairing them with perhaps Persian food or other foods. And we want to just, you know, inspire people to try your wines and also to try pairing it with Persian food. Especially as people are kind of looking to make special occasion dinners and just the seizing the opportunity. So thanks again for taking the time to be here with us today.
0:02:26 – Naseem
Yeah, no, I’m excited. It will be fun to, to see what people think.
0:02:30 – Beata
Yeah, absolutely.
0:02:31 – Bita
We also appreciate your generosity and sharing a few wines with us. And we love to share our feedback and tasting from afar. Maybe one day we can come up and taste in your tasting room and to also hear what your personal favorites are and any tips you have for both the new and the old connoisseurs.
0:02:52 – Moe
We would love to have you guys for sure.
0:02:55 – Beata
Thank you. So yeah, maybe we can start off if you guys don’t mind maybe giving us just a little bit of a like a little history on wine, Persian wine and kind of the just a little bit of background to lay the foundation of our conversation.
0:03:10 – Moe
Well, historically wine has been such a big thing in Persian culture and it dates back for over 10,000 years. It’s just wine was considered to be a very sacred thing because Persians always respected the sun and because the sun provides us with the energy and the heat. So the affinity that wine has with the sun was very important. It’s just throughout the history it’s been one of the places that actually wine founded and uh…
0:03:48 – Naseem
Well didn’t they say that it was like the glass was the liquid radiance from the sun?
0:03:52 – Beata
Wow, so pretty.
0:03:53 – Moe
Right. Yeah. The reason that it was sacred was just like because of the fact that its affinity to the sun and the sun being respected so much because it provided us with the energy and food and everything. And so that was the reason and that, you know, wine was consumed. Of course, pre-Islam was a different story than, you know, after Islam.
0:04:19 – Bita
It’s reminding me of our recent Yalda celebrations and what we’ve learned about Zoroastrian times and worshiping the sun and how important the agriculture and the crops were in ancient Persian culture. I think we have a lot to learn from those days.
0:04:36 – Naseem
Well, and what’s really cool, just kind of how we are farming-wise, we’re a Demeter Certified biodynamic farm. So initially when we started our farm, we were organic. And a lot of times in organic farming, you can get away with using certain things such as mining from the earth and putting things back that truly wouldn’t be in a natural state. And so that kind of led my dad to, when his grandparents had tea farms, they would farm naturally. And you know, in biodynamics, they look at the sun, the moon, the stars. And there’s, there’s an cosmic energy, right? And we’re not talking religious sense. We’re talking an energy that’s kind of unspoken or written about to understand. If you ask a doctor around the full moon, the ER gets some really crazy cases or you can hear that the tides of the waters are a lot more vigorous around the full moon. The same thing goes with planting and doing certain things in farming. And so you look at the system, not on just the micro level, but on a macro level. And, you know, we use what Mother Nature has given us to negate certain issues that could be on the property. You treat it like a living entity.
0:05:49 – Bita
Is Demeter the word for organic? Demeter means organic for wine.
0:05:54 – Moe
Biodynamic.
0:05:55 – Naseem
Biodynamics. Yeah. So Demeter is the certification that gives us our stamp of being biodynamic.
0:06:05 – Moe
Yeah. Biodynamic consists of biological aspect of things and dynamic aspect as well. In organic farming, only biological aspect is considered. But the dynamic effects, as Naseem said, just the fact that we are all under control of the whole universe and not only a farm, but also the whole macrocosm is considered to be conscious. So it’s just like when you consider your farm to be conscious, you and, you know, having its own identity and its character, you treat it much better. And then another aspect of this kind of farming is that you don’t bring any kind of fertilizer from outside. So you work with the things that you have and you make your farm to, to have a complete ecosystem. For that reason, we’ve been working over, you know, 20 some years now to bring all the components is necessary to have a healthy farm.
0:07:16 – Bita
That’s really interesting.
0:07:18 – Beata
I think that’s actually really beautiful because it reminds me of, like, Persian food. You know, when they talk about like the garmi or sardi, like the warmth and the coolness of foods, of Persian foods and how it becomes well balanced. It balances each other out, the warm elements and then the cooling elements of the foods that kind of makes me think of how you were describing being biodynamic is really kind of how are you balancing the land? It feels like it has those ancient methodologies that, that we apply to food, but how you apply it to the land. So I think that’s super beautiful.
0:07:55 – Naseem
And for people that don’t know this, that are American, that are listening, what we’re talking about is like warm foods bring certain properties to the body as well as cool. So like as a kid, when we were growing up and we would have rashes, it was avoiding having the warm foods and going towards cool foods such as I think the cucumber was one, Right? To help counterbalance it. And so again, it goes back to the same kind of concept. Mother Nature has given us so many plants that have the ability to kind of facilitate medicating the plant for what’s needed and think about it like vitamin C. Rose hips. They have the natural high vitamin C value. So by making that into a T form and having that sprayed onto the plants is a natural form to help bring up the vitamin C, which can control the sugar levels.
0:08:48 – Moe
In effect, this kind of farming works with the living realm of the things rather than man-made stuff that we’ve all seen the effect of the food that we’re consuming nowadays is so contaminated. And unless you consume something organic or biodynamic, this cause all sorts of medicinal problems for people. So it’s just like this really meant a lot to us to do the farming holistically. And we also, as far as wine making, we use the same technique. So our wineries certified, Demeter Certified, both in a vineyard and the wineries. So as far as the wine making, we don’t manipulate the wine. We make the wine just like the ancient time that they did.
0:09:44 – Naseem
They would ferment the grapes, right? There’s no additives like a lot of other states would have. So people that get certain effects with wine, they won’t notice that with ours because truly you’re tasting the fermented grapes. And I think a great way of giving an example. So I started, I was like 21 years old when I graduated college to take over what I was doing. And I remember a lot of other producers were kind of making fun of the way that we produced wine. And they were just like, this is a little hoaxies, a little weird. Sounds like voodoo. And I remember once coming to my dad and just being like, well, dad, stop talking about gnomes because people are thinking of these garden gnomes and we sound like we’re worshiping something weird. Whereas like in modern day times, it’s like the microorganisms is what they’re talking about when they talk about gnomes. So I think that there was this huge adjustment between people understanding what we were doing and what it meant. But a lot of those people are now using the same practices that we do. And they’ve turned over, which, you know, for me, I’d always be more protective of like, these people made fun of it. Why are they doing it. It’s such marketing? And I think no, I wish more people went like this because it will change the whole food chain of the world if we just produce things in the right way. Another example about biodynamics and how it works. 2013 was a year that we got a lot of rain in Oregon and a lot of people picked in the rain. So if they say they didn’t, most likely they’re lying. It was like, what, 13 days of rain?
0:11:10 – Moe
No, in eight days, we had 13 inch rain.
0:11:13 – Naseem
Yeah, it was something insane. But we knew it was coming, right? Like, you’ve got to just look and see what’s happening. And so what my dad did was he did, and again, it goes back to the whole affinity between earth, wind, fire, water?
0:11:29 – Moe
Yeah, the four elements
0:11:30 – Naseem
The four elements. And so, valerian?
0:11:33 – Moe
Yeah, we use the valerian is being used medicinally for thousands of years. And valerian has got affinity with the sun. So it brings the heat process. So after so much rain that the clusters were saturated with water, we used these two plants, valerian juice and then also rose hips. And we made a cocktail out of that. And what the valerian did brought the heat to the plant. So it dehydrated the grapes. And then the rose hip boosted the sugar level because at the time, you know, you get so much rain, it gets diluted and you don’t have as much sugar. It’s just pretty much the fact that you try to work in tune with nature rather than against it in a natural way. That’s, that’s what we do.
0:12:30 – Naseem
And there’s just all of these examples of ways that we can incorporate this, but people just don’t.
0:12:36 – Bita
You learned this from your parents and your grandparents. You mentioned before recording from the Gilan region, the Caspian region. So, you learned this from, was it your grandparents farm? And then you, through experimenting?
12:50 – Moe
I was very lucky as a kid. I used to go, you know, in the summertime, spend some time with my grandparents and they did do farming. And he was very much against, you know, all the chemicals that was coming to Iran during the Kennedy administration. And so I got my earful of, you know, his wisdom and all that. But then when I came to United States and bought the farm because we didn’t want to use any kind of even minerals, then I started studying biodynamic farming, which Rudolf Steiner actually in 1924 gave a lecture about that. And he pretty much copied what Zoroaster had said. So he had a lot of respect for Zoroaster. But what he did do was just like to put that lecture out, but advise people not to use these ways till it was proven because he wasn’t sure, you know, how things worked thousands of years ago. So then it became known to a lot of people after 1967, you know, he’s been around since then.
0:14:09 – Naseem
And he loves to read books. I mean, he’ll read the same books like 18 times, like a thousand different notes in it and pick up something new.
0:14:17 – Bita
It’s a real passion.
0:14:18 – Beata
I love it. I love it. Definitely pioneers in the biodynamic space.
0:14:23 – Bita
True passion. Well, you sent us three wines. So you want to get into the wines that we got to sample?
0:14:28 – Beata
Chat about the wines a little bit.
0:14:30 – Naseem
Yeah.
0:14:31 – Bita
Delicious. Three samples of pinot. Sparkling pinot noir rosé. That’s the first one I opened. Very light.
0:14:40 – Naseem
It’d be fun with Valentine’s Day. That’s why I threw it in there because it’s just fun. It’s sparkly. It’s pink.
0:14:46 – Beata
Yes.
0:14:47 – Naseem
Well, and a lot of times in the new world, you get sweet wines when it’s like that white or pinkish. And so ours is like totally on the dry side. So you can do foods with it. Whereas a lot of times, sparkling is more of like a sipper in joy as like an aperitif. Or as you could actually eat with.
0:15:02 – Bita
I really appreciated that it wasn’t sweet. I like a dry rosé sparkling. And that’s what this was. I would absolutely go and look for this one again because it was very drinkable.
0:15:12 – Moe
And it goes really well with caviar.
0:15:14 – Beata
With caviar. Yes. It was delicious. I enjoyed it with one of my girlfriends last night. I definitely wanted to have her try a taste of it as well. It was lovely. Like we opened it and we both, like, loved it from the very first sip. I like sparkling in general. And then sparkling rosé is like, you know, my favorite if I were to just, like, choose one. So it was very drinkable. It was, it was delicious. We really enjoyed that one. And I think that, yeah, for things to pair it with, caviar, of course, would be a really great…
0:15:45 – Naseem
Fried chicken.
0:15:46 – Beata
Absolutely.
0:15:47 – Naseem
Genuinely, the fat off of that is so good. I mean, people do popcorn and things like that, but like especially a good fried chicken sandwich.
0:15:55 – Moe
One of my daughters, my youngest one, actually loves that with popcorn. So if somebody doesn’t afford caviar, they could just have it with popcorn.
0:16:06 – Naseem
You got both the drug version and the rich version, right?
0:16:09 – Bita
It sounds like it’s nice with something salty.
0:16:11 – Naseem
Yeah. Yeah. And our sparkling is 100% Pinot Noir, whereas like sometimes people will do like a blend between like a white and a red. We started doing our sparkling, I want to say like 2018 era. We used to do like a still dry rosé and more producers started doing the same style because everyone wanted sweeter style. So because we like dry, we’re like, let’s just do a sparkling. And it’s done so well. We do about a thousand cases on a good year for it. All of our wines have a Persian word. So kind of going back to our roots, Maysara means house of wine. There’s multiple ways of people saying it. Maysara, Maysara, but the root of it is house of wine. And so all of our wines all have a Persian word attached to kind of keep in the culture because we do want to focus the roots that this is where wine came from. This is the oldest history of, kind of where we are from. And so this is the only one of the lineup that we haven’t agreed on a name. But hopefully one of these days…
0:17:14 – Bita
Bita! Name her Bita.
0:17:18 – Moe
That’s a good name for it.
0:17:21 – Beata
You could name it Bita because “Bita” means without any other. So unique without any other. I think that would be a great name for your sparkling rosé.
0:17:29 – Naseem
That’s too funny. Yes.
0:17:31 – Bita
Does your wife, Flora, have a wine?
0:17:33 – Moe
She actually is named most of the wines, but…
0:17:37 – Naseem
Oh, whatever. You’re so part of it too.
0:17:39 – Moe
This is serious because when she was pregnant with the three girls, every time I would wake up and say, it’s a girl and this is the name.
0:17:51 – Naseem
He would dream our names, but it’s just his stubborn way of getting what he wants.
0:17:57 – Moe
After we opened the winery, she thought I would use a trick on her. So she said, I’m going to name all the wines. So she’s been naming everything.
0:18:07 – Naseem
No, I really want to do, like some kind of queen, like Malekeh. We have so much like, I know, but like, there’s so much king focus, but we’re such a woman focused business. You know what I mean? We’re all running it.
0:18:17 – Bita
Yes. Yes.
0:18:18 – Beata
Yep.
0:18:19 – Naseem
We have a princess. We have Arsheen, which is King Cyrus’ daughter, who was said to have the most impeccable palette. She was like a professor of mathematics. But like, I’m telling you, we need some more girls. Yeah.
0:18:32 – Moe
Arsheen was the daughter of King Cyrus.
0:18:35 – Bita
Oh, and Beata joon, in San Francisco, Beata joon’s son is named Cyrus.
0:18:40 – Beata
Yeah, my little boy is Cyrus.
0:18:42 – Naseem
My sister wanted to do the same.
0:18:44 – Beata
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that name, Cyrus, too.
0:18:47 – Bita
I did a cutesy thing to the rosé. I don’t know if I would do it again because it changed the flavor, but it was a very cutesy thing for social media, whatever. I made some ice cubes from heart shapes, and I put pomegranate juice in it because I thought it would be cute. But it made the wine sweet, which I didn’t want it to be sweet after I tasted how it was supposed to taste. But it was a cute thing for Valentine’s Day. And I was trying to keep with the Persian theme with pomegranates.
0:19:19 – Naseem
No, totally. And the other thing that’s really funny is, even ice cubes, like ice, water, any of that changes the pH balance of wine. So really, it makes me cringe a little when you go to restaurants and people that, can I have an ice cube in there? I’m like, no, don’t do it. Just ask them to chill it. Don’t do it.
0:19:41 – Bita
Just chill the glass, yeah.
0:19:42 – Naseem
Yeah, because they either over-chill white and they under-chill red. A little bit of chill on red is not bad.
0:19:49 – Beata
I love it. It makes it so crisp.
0:19:51 – Naseem
Yeah, and unfortunately, people just do it opposite, you know, and it’s like, no.
0:19:55 – Beata
Yeah, again, the sparkling was fantastic. Loved that. But I really loved the Jamsheed. Such a fun bottle. It was very drinkable. It was just going down really easy. So I really enjoyed the Jamsheed. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
0:20:10 – Naseem
Well, I will start from the fact that what makes us different than 99% of the wineries domestically is we don’t release our wines chronologically. So you’ll see a lot of times, like 19, 20s and 21s of Pinot Noir out. If you see our current release right now is 15. The next vintage may be 13 or it may be 16. People just don’t produce this way. It’s a lot more old world. And we just want to make sure that when customers get a bottle of our wines, when they see it in the market, they know that it’s ready. But that doesn’t mean that it’s going to age out fast. So, Harvey Simon actually did an article back in 2018. It was a 10-year retrospect on Oregon Pinot. We were the only property that went from 91 points to 97 points 10 years after our release date. So it shows you that it keeps aging well. And I think for us, it’s just like, it shows people if a 2008 wine is still tasting that great, and at that point the bottle was like $45 at 97 points. It just shows you what we’re doing is so special. So you want to talk about Jamsheed?
0:21:16 – Moe
Ah, Jamsheed, we produce more of a Jamsheed than any other wines. And the Jamsheed comes from the entire vineyard. We have like 260 acres that’s been planted to different grapes, but maybe like about 85% is all Pinot Noir. So it’s every section of the vineyard comes to this wine. And the reason we called it Jamsheed was just because King Jamsheed is known to be the first person to find out about wine and wine drinking. And he actually ordered his entire territory that he ruled vineyards to be put up. So even the common man could enjoy wine. So we produce more of a Jamsheed than anything else. And it comes from the entire vineyard. And we age it for about 11 months in a barrel. And then we bottle it. But as Naseem said, since we don’t manipulate the wine, and we don’t add anything to it, and we don’t take anything out of it, it’s just the way that in ancient time, people in Persia made wine, that it would last for 40, 50 years. So it’s just like we try to pick it a little bit early because our winery, you know, having such a big vineyard, we have to make the wine several times. So the ones that we pick a little bit earlier, that goes into Jamsheed. So it’s a little bit more, not unripe, but the sugar level is not that high and it’s got more acidity. So it’ll age much longer.
0:22:59 – Beata
I really enjoyed that one.
0:23:00 – Bita
What foods would you enjoy with Jamsheed?
0:23:02 – Naseem
With a jam sheet, you could do a lot of vegetables that are well seasoned with some pepper, but it goes really well with red meat, duck. I mean, there’s really nothing you can go wrong because it’s such a medium body pinot in my opinion, it’s not light and it’s not heavy. So it makes it a little bit more of the everyday pinot that it’s not hard to pair with. Whereas I think some of the other ones, because they could be a little bit more on the fuller side, it’s a little bit more targeted.
0:23:30 – Moe
Yeah, Pinot Noir is very food-friendly wine, so you could have it with a lot of things. It’s just really up to the palette of each individual, but we at our own home like it with kabob, with a lot of really…
0:23:46 – Naseem
Pasta. Like it’s easy.
0:23:47 – Beata
Yeah.
0:23:48 – Bita
Chelo kabob with your doogh and your Jamsheed, next to each other.
0:23:54 – Naseem
Oh, I remember that when we were kids.
0:23:59 – Beata
You know, speaking about Persian food, specifically, you know, a lot of different flavor profiles, you know, the balance of sweet and savory and sour. You know, when you’re thinking about what kind of wine to pair Persian food, you do need to kind of take that into consideration of like how bold it is, or how full it is, versus how acidic it is, so that the subtle like spices maybe and some Persian food don’t, doesn’t get lost with the wine. So I think that, you know, kind of pairing it, it does take a little bit of consciousness to make sure that you’re really pairing it well.
0:24:30 – Naseem
100%. And that’s like growing up as kids, like a lot of times my mom, because my mom’s a phenomenal cook. That’s why it’s hard to eat other people’s Persian food. And it was like, oh, well, wine doesn’t really pair well with, you know, a lot of the cuisine. But then once we actually started our own winery and because we really do low impact farming and the acidity is just well balanced with the fruit, we haven’t had much of an issue. I’ve actually done quite a few Persian wine dinners. Which was kind of surprising for me. And I always would be like, oh, I wonder how the chef’s going to do this. And it turned out really good. You just did one in LA when you went down there. And didn’t you say that the pairings were really good?
0:25:10 – Moe
Yeah, it went really well. It’s just like my wife, she’s got a really talent to put things together. She actually makes the cooking really easy. She does it so fast and quickly, but she does use a lot of herbs. And she normally, the food that’s for our events that she designs, people don’t really think that this would go good with a wine. But every single time that we’ve had events, people always want her food.
0:25:44 – Naseem
Yeah, but it’s also because a lot of estates will do like a lot of charcuterie, meat, cheeses, the basic stuff that could go. For us, we want people to go home and realize, okay, these things kind of paired well so that they have an idea of what goes well. I went to a very famous, and this was years ago, I won’t say who it was. He’s a very famous chef. And one of the pairings on the menu was a Pinot Noir and an asparagus soup. That’s just two things that just don’t go well together that anybody that’s educated in the scene should know. So for us, we just want to educate people so that they have an idea of, okay, if these are some of the ingredients they use, this would be safe to use with this wine. So you kind of work your way down the table where there’s a few wines with a few different dishes. And you know, okay, this is the same wheelhouse of foods.
0:26:33 – Beata
Yeah, absolutely.
0:26:25 – Bita
I haven’t opened my Jamsheed yet. I’m very excited. My brother is coming and he’s the steward connoisseur wine specialist of the family. So I’ll enjoy that with him. But I am still sipping the other one, Asha. This is Asha.
0:26:50 – Naseem
Okay, that’s the one that dad wanted to send. My sister’s the winemaker. So Tahmiene, I think she has the title of having been the youngest female winemaker in the US. She started in her position at like 22, I want to say. With that being said, you’ll ask her which one her favorite wine is. And she’s like, it’s like having five kids. You’re not going to say one is your favorite. You have five kids. You cut this one off or you cut this one off. It all hurts, right? But I will say, I think this is probably one of my favorite pinots that we make. I think it’s really pretty and feminine. You get that nice balance between the fruit, the pomegranate, the oak, and just really good acidity. So this one, I know my husband loves to do it with like pork. You could do a chocolate torte. That’s what I am, more of the sweets person.
0:27:35 – Beata
Mm, yeah, that’s a good idea.
0:27:37 – Naseem
It’s really beautiful. We make 560 cases of this so it’s a little bit more allocated. So harder to get. But it’s just even for having that many cases, I think this comes in at less than $60 a bottle.
0:27:50 – Moe
We do use a little bit more oak in there, but like 40, 45% new oak.
0:27:56 – Naseem
You can’t taste it.
0:27:57 – Moe
And then we age that in the barrel for about 23 months.
0:28:03 – Naseem
So if it even hits the bottle, it’s in the barrel for 23 months. So two years before it could even hit the bottle and then it could be one to five years in the bottle before release.
0:28:13 – Beata
Yeah, it sounds like that. I mean, this was a 2015. I paired it with khoreshteh karafs. So a celery stew with a mint and the parsley. We make it kind of sour. So I loved the pairing with it because it was able to handle the strong flavors of the khoreshteh karafs. It was like the wine stood up to it. So I loved the way it was paired.
0:28:34 – Naseem
And my mom does some duck dish. What duck dish does mom do with the Asha?
0:28:39 – Bita
Fesanjoon.
0:28:40 – Naseem
Yeah, was that what it was?
0:28:42 – Bita
With pomegranate that looks like a mole.
0:28:44 – Naseem
Yeah, she does that with the asha. Yeah.
0:28:46 – Moe
Fesanjoon, yeah.
0:28:48 – Bita
Oh, fesanjoon would be good. Yeah.
0:28:50 – Naseem
It’s not my favorite dish. I can’t do it.
0:28:51 – Bita
No? Oh my God. It’s one of my favorite.
0:28:52 – Beata
That can be pretty sour too, depending on how you make it sweet and sour. So I love it. And then this bottle with the glass stopper cork.
0:29:02 – Bita
Oh yeah. Is Asha the only one that has that type of bottle that you have to open with your thumbs?
0:29:08 – Naseem
We have a couple of them that have been like that. Most of our wines are under the screw cap. Screw cap is the best enclosure out there. I don’t care who you are. Corks can be good. It’s just, unfortunately, you’re at the luck of the place you’re buying it, right? We lost almost 3% of our production one year due to bad corks. So we switched out of it. Yeah. It’s just not worth it. The amount of oxygen that can get in through these screw caps, we haven’t had one bottle ever return to us. But what we did do for some of the premium wines because people like that traditional look, we went to the glass cork, right?
0:29:44 – Beata
Which is so beautiful.
0:29:45 – Bita
That was my first time. And thank you for the person in your company that did the YouTube video.
0:29:53 – Beata
Yeah, I wasn’t sure how to open it at first.
0:29:55 – Bita
Did you have to look up how to open it, too, Beata joon?
0:29:57 – Beata
I did. I hadn’t opened one like that before. I just didn’t want to break it. So I just did a quick search to do it.
0:30:03 – Naseem
That’s why they did it. Dom’s like, we need to make a video because people are always asking us how to open the bottle.
0:30:09 – Beata
Yeah, but it made it so easy and it was great. You just popped it up. This being all glass was pretty special. So it was really beautiful. Makes it feel even more special.
0:30:17 – Moe
Actually, my older daughter, Tahmiene, the winemaker, she actually advises people that not to throw this bottle out. And she’s got that glass closure, put olive oils and things like that. Because the glass is a little bit darker.
0:30:34 – Naseem
He’s forgetting. That was my idea. Okay. You could put garlic in there or you could put some like chili, like a, a jalapeno and then you can make different flavors and then you just close it and then you use your olive oil whenever you need it.
0:30:46 – Beata
Oh, great idea.
0:30:47 – Bita
Okay. So I’m new to this glass bottle thing. So you’re supposed to actually put that same glass top back. It seals it.
0:30:53 – Naseem
It fits our bottle. Yeah. So what you do is, once you finish drinking it, right, then you just throw in your olive oil, fill it with whatever olive oil you want. You could add a little bit of lemon skin or you could do garlic.
0:31:06 – Beata
Throw a little rosemary.
0:31:07 – Naseem
Yeah, just whatever you want. Anything. And we love to play with food and so we always have these weird concoctions going on.
0:31:15 – Moe
The advantage of this glass closure is that the wine will age forever in there. So it won’t go bad. With the cork after so many years, if you want to keep that wine, you have to change the cork. But with this you don’t and you don’t have to lay it down on the side for the cork to have the moisture. So you could stand it up.
0:31:39 – Beata
Oh, great. Okay, perfect.
0:31:41 – Bita
It’s kind of for the premium wine.
0:31:43 – Naseem
Yeah. And it’s just so expensive that we just haven’t moved our entire lineup. Otherwise, the consumers will have to pay for it at the end. And I don’t know necessarily what they want.
0:31:51 – Beata
No, it’s nice to have kind of like a special occasion one, too. Well, this has been really informative. I’ve loved this. You know, as I mentioned, we hadn’t had a wine-focused episode. We’ve had a beer-focused episode. We had Zahra from Back Home Beer out of Brooklyn on the show last year. And we loved learning about those elements and the history behind that and now the history behind the wine. So thank you both, again, for taking the time to meet with us, to chat with us. Where can our listeners learn a little bit more about you guys? Where can they find you?
0:32:19 – Naseem
So for sure on our website, www.maysara.com, but we are represented in over 40 states. So if they just go into their local wine shop or store that they purchase, they could just ask for the wines and hopefully it already is there, but otherwise our distributor can get it to any of their wine shops.
0:32:37 – Beata
Great, and it looks like you can also order on your website as well.
0:32:40 – Naseem
Yep, exactly.
0:32:41 – Moe
Right, we have some other wines that it’s specifically made for our wine club members or the consumers that they want.
0:32:51 – Naseem
So we have a wine club as well. And that’s listed on the website.
0:32:54 – Beata
Yeah, I was noticing that. That looks lovely. Again, thank you guys. It was really great meeting you guys, tasting your wines, hearing your history. And again, thank you for being on the show with us.
0:33:04 – Naseem
Yes, it was nice to meet you guys.
0:33:06 – Moe
Hopefully you guys will get a chance to come and visit us and see our vineyard and the winery on your own.
0:33:14 – Naseem
Just five crazy Persians and a bunch of people.
0:33:17 – Beata
Yes, would love to.
0:33:18 – Bita
Thank you so much.
0:33:20 – Beata
I love it. Okay, great. Until next time. Thank you.
0:33:23 – Moe
Pleasure meeting you. Thanks.
0:33:25 – Bita
Bye.
0:33:26 – Beata
Bye-bye.
0:33:30 – Beata
You’ve been listening to the Modern Persian Food podcast with Bita and Bita. Thanks for spending time with us. If you’ve enjoyed what you heard today, consider telling your friend or giving us a good rating. You can subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcasting app or find us online at modernpersionfood.com or on Instagram for the recipes and information we talked about today. We’d love to hear your thoughts and see you next time. Thank you.
Key Word Definitions and Spellings
Arsheen- Persian princess, astronomer, and winemaker in the Archeamenian period, also the name of a Pinot Gris at Maysara Winery
Asha – Zoroastrian concept of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, also the name of a Pinot Noir at Maysara Winery
Chelo Kabob, Chelo Kabab, Chelo Kebob, Chelow Kabob, Chelow Kabab, Chelow Kebob – Rice and kebab (usually a grilled meat)
Doogh – carbonated yogurt drink
Fesanjoon, Fesanjan, Khoresh Fesanjoon, Khoresh Fesanjan, Khoresht Fesanjoon, Khoresh-e Fesanjoon, Khoresh-e Fesanjan – Pomegranate walnut stew
Garmi or Sardi, Garm or Sard, Garmí or Sardí – Garmi meaning warming and Sardi meaning cooling. It is the practice of balancing warming and cooling foods to bring the body to balance.
Jamsheed, Jamshid – A Shah in poet Ferdowsi’s poem Shahnameh, also the name of a Pinot Noir at Maysara Winery
King Cyrus – Ancient Persian king, founder of the Acheamenid empire
Khoreshteh Karafs, Khoresh Karafs, Khorest Karafs – Celery Stew
Malekeh – Queen of Persia during the Qajar dynasty
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