Tense with risk, sprinkled with subterfuge, and inspirational in outcome, the mission to produce the first commercially made wine from grapes grown in Iran since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution follows the arc of a spy novel.
But this quest truly did take place in the fall of 2021, and it was captured scene-by-scene, from its surprise conception to those celebratory first pours, as the subject of a new documentary film. And though stocks of that resulting wine are already dwindling, you can still purchase a $90 bottle of Molana to try a nearly forgotten grape called rasheh grown in the Sardasht hills of northwestern Iran.
“This film was supposed to be a very different movie,” explains Jason Wise, director of Cup of Salvation , which has been playing to sold-out crowds in theaters from Chicago to New York City since last fall and will be released by the streaming service SOMM TV on February 23. Over five years in production, the documentary morphed from a wide-ranging story about how an ancient beverage became available in every corner store to a much tighter profile of Vahe Keushguerian, the winemaker who decided to find and export grapes from Iran to his winery in neighboring Armenia.
