End of the vine

The Islamic revolution abolished Iran's ancient tradition of wine-making but the residents of Khollar are showing some bottle, writes Robert Tait

The Islamic revolution abolished Iran's ancient tradition of wine-making but the residents of Khollar are showing some bottle, writes Robert Tait

A disused factory in Khollar, Iran, that once made wine and fruit juice for local consumption. Photograph: Robert Tait

The desolate vista resembles an archaeological ruin, or the shattered aftermath of a devastating military bombardment. Once-proud mud-brick homes are uninhabited and partially reduced to rubble. The streets, mere dirt tracks, are potholed and rutted. Identifiable signs of human activity are - for the most part - absent. And even among the dead in the local graveyard, many headstones, bearing elaborate carvings that hint at a long-gone affluence, are damaged or visibly uncared for.

But this is not a war zone. And the life that bustled here disappeared, not thousands of years ago, but within the last generation, shrivelled almost out of existence under the stern new order of Iran's Islamic revolution. This is Khollar, an isolated, once-thriving small town set in a valley amid the Zagros mountains. It stands - though only just - as a salutary example of a world disappeared, swept out of existence by an oceanic wave of political and social change.

Despite the aura of abandonment, around 250 people still live here, somehow squeezing an income from sources such as sheep farming. Before the revolution in 1979, there were several thousand. They were sustained by Iran's long-defunct wine industry.
A verdant landscape of grape plants dominating the surrounding hillsides was picked assiduously and its fruit loaded onto trucks to be transported to a refinery in Shiraz, about 40 miles away, where it was turned into wine. The refinery's Jewish owners sold their produce on the domestic market and abroad, where it gained an international reputation.

"Ten to 20 trucks a day would come in seven days a week during the summer months. It was a very busy town," said Ravanbakhsh Vaseghi, 37, whose father and grandfather earned their living selling grapes to the Shiraz wine merchants. "Before the revolution, I remember friends coming back from Dubai with a bottle of wine. The label was marked 'Khollar, Shiraz, Iran.' Red and white wines were produced from here. It was part of life. The change was sudden."

It was wrought by the revolution, with its strict injunctions against alcohol. The Shiraz refinery was closed. Where it once stood, a sports centre is now being built for employees of the local telecommunications company. The lorries that had guaranteed Khollar a basic level of prosperity stopped coming when the refinery shut. Gradually, the population drifted away in search of new livelihoods.
Today the dead buried in the dilapidated cemetery outnumber by several times those still living in Khollar. The hillsides, once green and fertile with grape plant, are now largely brown and barren. In the old days, the only irrigation was provided by the region's modest rainfall, whereby local farmers believed they produced a distinctively rich grape ripe for wine-making. The grapes produced here now are used for fruit juice or sold to local fruit markets.
Many believe this rugged area of southern Iran was the original source of the grape used to create the world-famous Shiraz wine - today produced in vineyards in California, Australia, France and South Africa. The claim is disputed by some experts, who believe the grape to have originated in France. What is not in doubt, however, is the central place of wine in an ancient Persian culture held dear by many Iranians.
Iran's most revered poet, Hafez, wrote voluminously on wine's virtues, as did several of the nation's other prominent bards. Even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the famously ascetic father of the revolution - and an amateur poet in his spare time - composed verse praising "wine bearers and wine shops", although it is widely assumed his references were allegory for the spiritual joy of religious belief.
According to legend, the roots of wine's hallowed status lie in Khollar. Credit is given to one of Iran's ancient mythical kings, Jamshid, who is said to have discovered its medicinal qualities after his wife became gravely ill but later made a spectacular recovery. This was attributed to the fermented liquid she had drunk from grapes blown into ditches during a storm. Convinced of its benefits, Jamshid brought settlers to the area, who, the story goes, established the town of Khollar.

Scientists have provided a more precise explanation. They analysed six containers discovered more than two decades ago in Hajji Firuz Tepe, a Neolithic village in the Zagros mountains, and concluded that wine was being made in Iran as far back as 7,000 years ago - 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the ancient practice is forbidden by the strictures of Islamic rule.

Ever resourceful and independent of mind, Khollar's few remaining denizens have nonetheless found a way to continue their proud tradition. They do so by pouring freshly squeezed grape juice into clay pots, which are then placed in freshly dug ditches before being covered with sheep droppings to aid fermentation and, coincidentally, escape the eyes of any law enforcement authorities who might have occasion to visit. If they ever do, their detection skills might not stretch to unearthing the illicit alcohol. But they may observe that, shorn of its previous inhabitants and cut off from its time-honoured source of income, Khollar lacks something generally deemed essential in contemporary Iran - a proper mosque.