How did I end up in wine? I started early on. I was 19. I lived in Italy, and that’s when I discovered wine, the Italian wine, Chianti. Then I went back to the States, I went to college and then became a restaurant manager. I opened my own restaurant. That was in 1985 or so, when I had early access to wine, buying for my restaurant. I then made a bigger restaurant. I got more involved, and at some point I fell in love with the whole idea of wine

I started importing wine. I left the restaurant, I sold my share, and I started importing wine from Italy, from France into California. And I think that wasn’t enough. I had to live in Tuscany. So I packed up my family and we went to Tuscany. It was the dark days in ‘94.

In ‘94 every property was for sale in Italy. So I leased vineyards. I leased a winery. I started making wine. I went to Puglia and made wine there. So that’s how I got involved. Somewhere around ‘96. In ‘97 I came to Armenia to visit as a tourist, and I was told that this is where everything started.

This is the ground zero of winemaking, the history of winemaking, of viticulture. So I fell in love with the idea. I came here to buy land and planted vineyards 20-some years ago. I came back in 2009 and I’ve been here ever since, making wine for myself. I have an incubator winery and I make wine for other people who have vineyards and want to make wine. So roughly for 30 to 33 years I’ve been involved in wine.

Why Armenia and how come some people consider Armenia to be the origin of wine where it all originated? Well, there are two routes. One is the mythological, which normally is based on something in history that has happened. Noah went on the Ark, the flood, and then it landed on Mt. Ararat, which is the highest peak in this plateau.

Then he came down and the first thing he did was plant a vine. Then, of course, everything is fast, very quick in the Bible. He planted vines, made wine, got drunk and so on and so forth. So that’s the mythological, and it might be that there is some basis to that. There must have been flooding somewhere around here and so on and so forth.=

So there’s some truth. I mean, of course it’s not true. You know, everyone has their own interpretations. But the truth remains that we talk. We have the oldest winery in the world which is in Areni – 1 Cave, and that carbon dated 6,100 years as the oldest evidence of winemaking.