Wine without borders – Persian winemaking with a French accent – Thursday 29th January

Perhaps it was a strange form of fate. Masrour Makaremi was born in the intriguingly named town of Shiraz, Iran, where his family believed in the individual and collective freedoms of the Iranian people. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 curtailed those freedoms, his father was forced into exile, before his mother was imprisoned. When she died, Masrour left Iran, aged ten, to settle in France with his father.

There, he became fascinated by the sciences, eventually studying to become an orthodontist. Today he runs a surgery in Bergerac, while also acting as CEO of a tech start-up developing AI-based tools for use in the medical sector. But his true passion remains his homeland, and Masrour devotes much of his spare time to researching Persia’s rich heritage and collecting ancient artefacts. At the heart of this devotion is a love of wine – both the drink itself and its historical significance within Persian culture, notably in poetry and literature.

Five years ago, Masrour took his own small step in reviving Persian winemaking via a two-hectare vineyard in Montravel, along the Dordogne River between Bergerac and Bordeaux. There he cultivates – you’ve guessed it – Shiraz. The grapes are picked by Iranian women who were also forced into exile and who see the harvest as an act of resistance against the Tehran regime, before the wine – named Cyhrus, after the founder of the Persian Empire – is aged in porous terra cotta amphorae lined with tree resin.

Because Syrah/Shiraz is not a typical local variety, the wine does not qualify for the Montravel appellation, instead being classified as a Vin de France. Masrour, however, sees the wine very much as a Franco-Persian venture. Indeed he has since launched the Franco-Persian Wine Collaboration, a project with the National Institute for Agricultural Research to plant 35 Persian grape varieties in France, where he believes they could help in the fight to counter climate change.

For Masrour, Cyrhus is more than a wine: it is a symbol of defiance to the Tehran regime which has erased Persia’s winemaking history. ‘As Persians, we must try to keep our traditions, our treasure, alive,’ he says. Join him as he explores this theme, and much more besides, in what promises to be a fascinating evening.

The wines we will be tasting:
Champagne on arrival
2022 Cyrhus, Vin de France
2023 Cyrhus, Vin de France
2024 Cyrhus, Vin de France

Thursday 29th January
St. James’s Room
18:30 – Welcome reception
19:00 – Masterclass begins
20:30 – Masterclass ends

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