(Syrah grapes are harvested in the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Image source: Drood Winery of Persia.)

Disclaimer: This article was written before the recent joint military actions by the United States and Israel against Iran and the ensuing regional escalation that unfolded. These new developments and their geopolitical consequences are not the primary focus in what follows, but the piece does explore the tensions within Iran leading up to the attacks.

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When the Islamic Revolution swept Iran in 1979, Shahram Soltani’s family was told to stop making wine.

For decades, winemakers like the Soltanis enjoyed the support of the Pahlavi monarchy and its head of government Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who wanted to see Iran become one of the world’s biggest wine producers. With that backing, in the years leading up to the revolution, there were around 300 wineries growing, harvesting, and processing grapes on massive vineyards in the Zagros Mountains and the semi-arid farmlands around the city of Shiraz. These areas were not new to the business of making wine; they constituted a part of viticulture’s fertile crescent—stretching across Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the countries of the southern Caucasus, Armenia, and Georgia—where wine culture existed for at least 7,000 years.

Then, in February 1979, things took a turn. “One day to another, Iran’s commercial wine culture just stopped,” said Soltani. “Everyone was finishing their harvest—all the tribes and families—preparing their new vintage and [then] bang, a seven millennia-long history of Persian winemaking entered a new, uncertain chapter.”

Even with new laws introduced by the Islamic Republic, families kept making wine behind closed doors. And, non-Muslim minorities such as Armenian and Assyrian Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were exempted from the ban, permitted to produce their own alcohol for ceremonial purposes. But it was nothing that Iran’s winemakers could share with the world.

When Soltani left Iran and relocated to Sweden in 2016, he wondered if a new chapter might be written in the history of Persian wine. “I saw urban wineries in Sweden. Or in London. Or in Germany, who would buy grapes from wine regions elsewhere and make wine in the city,” said Soltani. “That’s when I had the thought, why can’t we do the same? It’s legal to export grapes from Iran, so what is stopping us from making Persian wine elsewhere?”

In 2021, Soltani opened Drood—the first new Persian winery in nearly five decades—nestled amidst the old-growth forests, quaint red cottages, and historic glass factories and paper mills of Sweden’s rural Småland province. Over the last five years, the winery not only re-introduced Persian wine to a new audience but helped shed light on its border-crossing history and Iranians’ ongoing fight to preserve their cultural heritage along the way.

In many ways, Persia was “ground zero” for the origins of viticulture, historian Rudi Matthee told me in a phone interview. Though recent findings of bowls and goblets dating to around 7,000 BCE point to southeastern Anatolia and today’s Georgia as the earliest sites of wine production, some of the first wines to be produced were fermented in the regions near the Caucasus and Zagros mountains in the northern and western regions of what is modern-day Iran. Jars from 5,400 to 5,000 BCE containing what are likely remnants of wine have been found at Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Iranian Zagros Mountains, the same area where Soltani harvests his grapes today.

(Archaeological evidence of wine-making in Persia from at least 2500 BCE. Image source: TCYuen/Getty Images/BBC)

Matthee says that in pre-Islamic Iran, when Zoroastrianism was the predominant religious tradition, wine held a ritual function, representing significant spiritual symbols like fire, the sun, blood, and gold. Likewise, Persian Christians and Jews had no absolute restrictions against the consumption of wine and used it as part of their own religious ceremonies.

In his book Angels Tapping on the Wine House Door, Matthee writes that while the wine industry seems to have collapsed in areas dominated by the Umayyads (661-750 CE) and Abbasids (750-1258 CE)—the first two major hereditary dynasties of the Islamic caliphate—wine drinking continued to be prominent among the elite, especially in Iran.

Matthee says the persistence of Persian wine practices partly comes down to the fact that Islam did not erase the cultures that pre-existed its arrival, in Iran or elsewhere. “It was more a process of amalgamation and layering,” he said. Moreover, Matthee says early Umayyad and Abbasid courts were “drenched in alcohol,” where alcohol enlivened banquets and acted as a social and political lubricant. A more restrictive perspective on wine and alcohol only came later in the development of Islamic jurisprudence, Matthee said.

That ambiguity in interpretation and practice stems from the fact that the Quran itself is a bit enigmatic when it comes to alcohol. While the Quran (5:90-91) prohibits the consumption of khamr, often translated as “intoxicants,” there have been varying interpretations of that word’s meaning and to which intoxicants it refers. Some interpret it as only applying to date wine, while others extend its meaning to include wine made from grapes.

Others, such as early followers of the Hanafi school, advised that drinks made from barley or wheat are only prohibited if you get drunk, or as long as one does not come to prayer under the influence—though numerous Hanafi scholars today absolutely prohibit the consumption of any alcohol. Elsewhere, the Quran says alcohol can bring both profit and harm, can be a gift from God as well as wholesome nourishment (16:67), even going so far as to provide advice on how to properly drink it (4:43).

This textual ambiguity and judicial flexibility have led to all kinds of legal discussions over the years, and a range of consumption practices. “Even under regimes that have forbidden it, there was the law on the one hand and real life on the other” Matthee said. “The human spirit is still drawn to it, and Muslims are no different than other humans,” he said.

Consequently, across the centuries, wine—called may or bâdah in Persian—never disappeared from Iranian culture. Various leaders, religious minorities, and members of multiple Islamic empires and elite classes imbibed, often openly and to excess, across the years. Wine also frequently occupied pride of place in Iranian mythology, poetry, art, and civil society. Matthee said drinking wine “became a metaphor for the ardent feelings of the lover for the beloved in the imaginary world of Sufi, mystical poetry.”

In his seminal work What is Islam?, Shahab Ahmed proposed wine and wine-drinking were central, perhaps paradoxical, examples of how Islam encompasses seemingly opposing elements (e.g., drinking versus teetotalism, law versus mysticism) across its expansive and complex lived realities. Citing Islamic philosophical and mystical traditions across the Persianate world, Ahmed showed how wine acted as a bridge to divine experience, with wine showing up as a Sufi metaphor in poetry—like that of Khwaja Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Hafez.

Known by his pen name Hafez (or Hafiz), he was a celebrated fourteenth-century Persian lyric poet and Sufi hailing from Shiraz, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the Persian literary tradition. In his ghazals (poems or odes), he employs the image of wine as a recurring symbol for divine love, mystical rapture, and liberation from strict rational control. Writing from within a Sufi framework, Hafez used the imagery of filling goblets to overflowing and cup-bearers bringing “such wine not found in Heavens” to emphasize inward spiritual ecstasy over what he saw as the performative piety of outward religious observance.

As both metaphor and elite practice, wine and wine-drinking continued to serve as intimate and important symbolic elements of not only Persian, and later Iranian, culture, but for Islamicate communities across a vast swathe of Asia and Europe.

With such a rich connection to its culture, Soltani said the revolution’s arrival with its restrictions on wine consumption and production were both abrupt and disruptive. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power and founded the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, Muslims were banned from selling and consuming alcohol. Wineries were shuttered, vineyards were slashed and burned, and mass quantities of wine were poured out in the streets in pageant symbolism of Iran’s shift away from Western influence.

Nonetheless, over the last four decades, many Iranians continued to make homemade alcohol, known as aragh or sharab, for private consumption and house parties. But Soltani was long inspired to find a way to share Persian wine culture with the world. He also eyed a business opportunity after arriving in Sweden.

Soltani first moved to Sweden to attend university in the coastal city of Kalmar. When he arrived, he became one of the more than 80,000 Swedish residents born in Iran. He got a job working in cafes and started roasting his own coffee, later opening his own roastery and coffee shop. He had a home and a thriving business. He was happy. In many ways, Soltani said he was living the Swedish dream. But he kept coming back to wine. “I am a real wine nerd and always have a lot to say about making wine, wine facts, vineyards,” he said, “I mean, I grew up in it, as a child, surrounded by this world.” So, while fellow students were doing their homework or studying for an exam, Soltani was gaining knowledge about the process of harvesting grapes and making wine.

Consulting with biologists, international transport experts, and local winemakers in Sweden, Soltani developed a method of freezing grapes for export. The process starts 2,500 meters above sea level, in remote vineyards off the beaten track in the limestone bedrock of the Zagros Mountains where the nights are cold and the days sunny and dry. There, grape varietals like rasheh, lorkosh, gorchesh, and samarghandi are harvested before being frozen for shipping to southern Sweden.

Upon arrival, they are brought from the port to an old paper mill factory from 1880, where Soltani has set up shop in the bucolic environs of Gemla, a village outside of the 1,000-year-old Swedish city of Växjö, 450km southwest of Stockholm. With fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, Växjö is fast-growing, with an influx of newcomers from Africa and the Middle East. Historically, however, the area around Växjö is known as glasriket, or “the glass kingdom,” which has been shaping crystalline wonders since the mid-eighteenth century. Today, in the region’s former mills and factories, entrepreneurs like Soltani are busy diversifying the former glass kingdom’s business sector.

Local resident Maja Morsing, whose family has deep roots in the region, visited the winery with friends last year. They not only love the wine and the passion Soltani brought to the project, but the rich history he was introducing to the area. “In a way, it’s this amazing, global story,” said Morsing, “but it also fits the vibe here in Småland. In an area known for small entrepreneurs and people who strike out on their own to do their own thing, Soltani embodies the local spirit,” Morsing said.

That spirit—or Gnosjöandan as it is known, after the Småland town of Gnosjö—speaks to the region’s unique blend of resourcefulness and community-driven, collaborative entrepreneurship. Thought to have grown out of Småland’s historical hardship, need for making do with little in the face of the area’s thin soil, locals learned to innovate in everything from glass production to furniture to manufacturing—with world-renowned companies like IKEA and Husqvarna coming out of Småland. That spirit, according to Morsing, even extends to winemaking.

“When my grandpa was young, they were making fruit wine, dandelion wine, producing their own alcohol and were their own kind of entrepreneurs,” she said. It’s a culture, Morsing mused, of seeing value where others see leftovers, laboring collectively, and applying a sharp, practical creativity that converts obstacles into achievements far beyond the local horizon.

“What Drood [Soltani’s winery] is doing hooks into a tradition from the area itself,” she said, drawing deeply from place—both in Sweden and Iran. Like Småland’s red houses rising from rocky ground, Drood is built through frugality, collaboration, and a belief that something distinctive can grow in the most unexpected of places. In both Småland and Soltani’s winery, enterprise is less about scale than about character; a communal, resourceful response to the limitations of the land or laws that transforms the happenstance of history into creative workarounds and resilient originality. In that sense, Morsing said, the winery “feels very rooted, even if the grapes are uprooted from Iran to Sweden.”

Drood is still the only winery in the area, which with its thin soil is not conducive to growing grapes. But it is not alone in Sweden. The Scandinavian country is experiencing unexpected growth in its nascent wine industry. Thanks to global warming, long, sunny, summer days and the cultivation of new, fungus-resistant grape varieties like solaris, a white grape from Germany, as well as cabernet cortis and pinot noir précoce, the Swedish commercial wine industry has rapidly expanded in recent years. Though still relatively small—with only 200 winemakers with their own vineyards as of 2024—domestic sales have ticked up noticeably in recent years according to Systembolaget, the government-owned chain that sells drinks with an alcohol percentage above 3.5 percent. Industry experts predict wine manufacturing could grow by billions of euros in the coming years.

(Image source: Drood Winery of Persia)

With the quantity and quality of Swedish wine on the rise, customer interest is also growing, said Soltani. His Persian wines have been regular features at wine tastings around Sweden and in continental Europe.

Soltani said he maintains productive, collaborative, relationships with other members of Sweden’s burgeoning winemaking community. “It’s a small industry still in Sweden. Everyone tries to help each other,” he said. “We taste each other’s wines, we share notes, but there’s not competition between us because we are doing completely different things, working with different varieties—their grapes from southern Sweden, mine from the mountains of Zagros.”

“Making wine is like painting; no one can paint like others,” he said.

Not everyone, however, has felt the same. In 2024, after an inspection by the Swedish National Food Administration, Drood was forced to immediately halt its operations. The government would not permit Soltani to produce wine from Iranian grapes because of regulations protecting farmers, winemakers, and their products in the European Union. In an effort to protect the standards and authenticity of European wine production, they insisted that Drood’s drinks could not be considered “wine” under European Union Regulation No. 1308/2013, which sets strict requirements for grape origins, winemaking practices, and labelling. Systembolaget, however, was happy to continue selling the product, calling it an “alcoholic beverage made from grapes” instead.

The food agency’s ban was overturned in court in 2025, but not before millions of grapes were destroyed. “We were clear all along,” Soltani said, “we do not claim to make Swedish wine or German wine or any other kind of wine—we are proudly a ‘winery of Persia.’”

When Soltani spoke to me, he was back in Iran, working in the vineyards, visiting family, and celebrating the Persian new year—Nowruz. “It’s been a 13-day marathon of eating, celebrating, and visiting people near and far,” he said, “I cannot keep count of how many calories I’ve consumed these last two weeks!”

Along with the calories, Soltani has also been catching up with family members and friends who harvest and prune the vineyards to produce the grapes he uses to make the “alcoholic beverage” in Småland. When Soltani visits one of the villages in the area, he meets with local elders who, he said, may not know where Sweden is, but they are happy to know Persian wine is being made there. “There is this one old man, who said his daughter showed him on Instagram where the grapes were going and where the wine was being made,” Soltani said. “He could not have been prouder.”

Given today’s fraught political climate in Iran, where widespread demonstrations erupted across the country only to be crushed by the current regime, compounded by the attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel, any attempt to celebrate cultural roots, including the revival or remembrance of Persian wine traditions, takes on added resonance.

The unrest first took shape in strikes and protests in Tehran on December 28, 2025, triggered by runaway inflation and the dramatic collapse of its rial currency. Within days, demonstrations rippled outward to 92 cities across 27 provinces. Crowds gathered not only in major metropolitan areas but also in smaller, long-overlooked towns such as those in the Zagros mountains, where Soltani’s grapes are harvested.

In regions like Kermanshah and Ilam and cities such as Sardasht, areas long marked by economic marginalization, protests that began over economic hardship and rising inflation grew into a broader rejection of the authoritarian regime, with demonstrators demanding not only monetary relief but dignity, local autonomy, and an end to political repression. Empty market squares, closed storefronts, crackdowns, and arrests followed.

In the wake of the crackdowns, and in the uncertainty of what is to come, reconnecting with ancient practices isn’t simply a nostalgic act; it parallels a larger yearning for cultural agency and autonomy against a system that has suppressed both personal liberties and the narrative of their heritage.

As Soltani said, the remote vineyards, perched high in the mountains above Sardasht, tell stories of tradition, expertise, and family legacy. “Every grape,” he said, “is nurtured by hands that have passed down their skills through generations.”

“These vineyards are not just vineyards, they are the guardians of cultural heritage, woven into the fabric of history, and important to the local communities,” Soltani said.

In this light, Soltani’s story of nurturing an ancient craft in the diaspora can be seen as both a preservation of a pre-revolutionary cultural lineage and a quiet assertion of identity at a time when so many Iranians are openly asserting their right to shape their society’s future.

The choice to celebrate an ancient, suppressed practice resonates with calls for freedom, self-determination, and a future where cultural expression is not constrained by laws or fear.

Of course, there is the economic benefit, the jobs and income it creates as well. But mostly, making this wine is a matter of pride, said Soltani. “We know we are part of something,” he said. “It’s not just a name. It’s not a political thing. It’s not about religion either. It’s a deep history, a rich legacy.”

“This is the proudest thing we can say: we have made the reviving of Persian wine culture possible again after 46, 47 years,” said Soltani, “and we are once again sharing it with the world.”

Ken Chitwood is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth, Germany and Affiliate of the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. He is also a religion newswriter who serves as Editor of ReligionLink, a premier resource for journalists reporting on religion.