Carson, Leno, Fallon. Now it's wine talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to wine talks with Paul K. And we are in an away game in beautiful downtown Yetavan, about to have a conversation with James Dufengan. Introductions in just a moment. Wine talks. This episode sponsored by Total Wine and more, where you love what you find and find what you love. Distilled spirits, not available in Virginia or New
Hampshire. Must be 21 or older. Dubai wine talks, of course, available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Pandora, wherever you hang up for podcasting. And I was gonna say sponsored by the original wine of the month club, but that's no longer the case because I sold it. But we're here to have a fabulous conversation with a relative, with a mover to shaker of the armenian world. He's a hoteliere, he is a carpet manufacturer. I don't even know what else. He plants. Trees. And he now is getting into
the wine business. So we thought we'd have a conversation with cousin James Dufengan. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Paul. This is fabulous. We already had a great conversation already to be here, but you've done so much for the community. But catching up. You were born in LA, went to the law school in New York, dated my sister. I mean, what else could there be? That could have been the first point on my resume. Dated Paul's sister. I'm very proud. I appreciate that. I'll let her know.
But you were what's fascinating to me about your story. And of course, Greg, my brother in law, keeps this posted. You are the second cousin to my father in law. Is that accurate? Something like that, yeah. Your father and my father in law were first cousins. No, his father. Did I scream his father? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Ralph's father was my father's first cousin. Okay, this is bizarre. I'll tell you why it's bizarre. I just told the story to Connor. I come, Santa and I get engaged.
We're at the Tufenkian household. I walk down the hallway to her bedroom and this gentleman comes out of the bathroom and he's a spitting image of my mom's father. Spitting image. I'm like freaking out, like. Cause he reincarnated. His name was Harry Denalian. Huh. Okay. Now he's married to Ralph's sister Marian. Okay. So I look at Santa, I go, who is this guy? She goes, that's Harry D'alien. What do you mean? D'Nalian? That's my father. That's my mom's
maiden name. Well, they were first cousins. No kidding? Yeah. So when we were going through photographs when Marian passed away a couple years ago, there's my grandfather and this guy Harry hanging out at some event. I don't know what they were doing. There's all kinds of pictures of them together. So now I call Sandra cousin Cuz, as it were. It was just a little scary. But anyway, so you said you were in law school in New York. Were you chasing law for to do justice or to. Yeah,
it was kind of a justice mission. I mean, how I ended up in New York is kind of interesting for this context because I actually grew up knowing nothing about being Armenian. I didn't know about the genocide until I happened on a book about it in the library in college in Oregon. And when I learned about it, I just. Something in me just turned around and I said, I've got to become Armenian.
So when I applied to law school, I only applied in New York because I thought, and I also wanted to be in New York, but I thought that's a place to connect with Armenians, and that's really what I wanted to do. So, yeah, so that's just. That's just right there. Really interesting. I grew up, my dad was, you know, very cultural, but America was important, part of his culture as well, but certainly very familiar with the genocide. My grandparents fled both sides. But you read a book that
piques some interest. And I, obviously, Oregon, I knew David a little bit. We shared wine together a little bit. Do you remember what it was that this tragedy or this suppression or oppression that triggered an interest in this? Well, I think my whole family, for some reason, and you can't really see it in my parents, but my brother and sister and I all were very justice oriented. I think my mom had a strong streak of that. Just the injustice of the genocide, besides the horror.
I mean, yeah, it just was something. And that was my history. And I think at some point, I realized that if I didn't kind of turn around and become Armenian, I was actually participating in the genocide by dissolving into american society. And I was like the next generation of the Turks eliminating us as a race, and I wasn't going to be a part of that. That's very interesting. So why do you think in your household, you would. I mean, my father spoke five languages.
I've still had learned one. My second language had to learn on my own, which he spoke. But how is it that you don't think your parents were indoctrinated that way? I think they were just too focused on making it in America, you know? Yeah. And maybe it was that time they were politically kind of conservative. We were always very deeply christian, protestant, christian, and that was kind of their channel for their energies, all of that. I think that generation was like
that. I mean, they came to America, they saw the opportunities. They felt like they owed. My dad, clearly, in 1949, when he came here, felt like he owed America. Well, USC in particular, something, because they game of life, and maybe that's what it is, but they would never forget the genocide. So what happened with that one? What did you do with this information? The information about the genocide? Yeah. Like, you turned to New York. I'm going
to be. I'm going to move to New York and I'm going to become an Armenian. Yeah. So I first big move was I joined the entranique dance group in New York while I was going to law school. There's no one ever. And, yeah, I. And there, I mean, that opened up a whole world of Armenians. I mean, it was around the time that Beirut was in major civil war. And so the group consisted of Armenians from all these exotic places that I had dreamed about, you know, places like Beirut and Aleppo and
Cairo. And so it was just, I mean, for me, a white bred kid from, actually, Oregon, more than California. It was like just opening a door to the world. It was so exciting for me. So did you recognize the differences of the location? Like the babies having their tendencies? They were lunatics. That's what I remember. Yeah. Very big differences. That's very funny. And also the second generation Armenians like me, there were a few of us from California, and
like, we were just in a totally different world too. I mean, but it was so great being together and just feeling this sense of kind of brotherhood and sisterhood with Armenians from everywhere. Held early twenties because I went to. Armenian assembly internship in Washington, DC. And I had, look, my mom would threaten me with sending me to Camp KeSsOB if I didn't behave. I mean, literally, she would do that. The
worst thing she could do to you. Exactly. She'd put on my place at the dinner table saying, if you don't behave, she'd circle the ad. And so I didn't know about our music until I got to Washington, DC and open the whole world. I went to dinner with my friend, one of my best friends, Greg Felician, right now, learned about Roosa Heights and all that stuff. You know, I think that's that root culture stuff was. It kind of triggers a little bit.
You kind of feel a little nostalgic. You kind of feel like, it's going on. So. But how'd you end up here then? I mean, there's a huge chasm between joining the entre de dance group and, you know, developing in Armenia. Right. Well, the story starts in 1981. I came here on a Columbia university sponsored student trip, and a few of my friends came along and we spent ten days in Armenia and fell
totally in love with the place. And on the last day of the trip, we're sitting around on the steps of one of the ministries and somebody said, so if Armenia ever became free, I mean, not like it's ever going to happen or any way it's possible, but, like, would you come back? You know? And we basically all said, well, yeah, of course we would. It'd be the opportunity of a lifetime. A thousand years with no country, and
we have to come back. So then came independence and the Artsakh war, and I was sitting comfortably in my nice apartment in New York with my new successful business and just couldn't sleep nights thinking that I was not a part of this big struggle that was going on. I mean, it looked like a next genocide at that time. And I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines. You were making
carpets at that point. Yeah. And that's key, actually, because, I mean, everybody knew at that point, this was probably in 90, this was in 93, that what Armenia needed more than anything was employment. There was like no economy here. Everything had collapsed. It was total chaos and they needed employment. And some years before, I had already set up a corporate production in Nepal with some tibetan
partners. And that was the basis of my business. And I looked at Armenia and I said, there's no reason I couldn't do the same thing there. So, you know, before I came, everybody is telling me it's an impossible place to work. You know, there are corruption and chaos, and if you happen to be successful, the mafia will edge in on your business. And I just said, I don't care. I'm going. So I came here to start up a
carpet business. That is fascinating. We gotta go back to, you said you had a successful carpet business in Nepal, and now they're actually trying to grow grapes in certain parts of India. But there's kind of a jump there. You're at law school and now you're making carpets, which is a huge undertaking in a country that had probably less resources than, than expected. So what? Just tell me about that for a second. The transition from law to carpets. Yeah.
Simply says, no one ever again. Third year of law school, I had worked a couple summers for law firms. And I looked in the mirror one day and I said, dude, these are the best years of your life. There is no way you're going to dress up in a suit and chain yourself to a desk for 12 hours every day. And I said, I got to find another way. And I had been buying and selling carpets to pay my way through law school. I knew a little bit about it because of some previous experience.
And I had this idea about making the first 21st century modern oriental rug business. I mean, the industry hadn't changed in 500 years. And so I had this idea, and I thought if I was successful at it, I could work. Work it for three or four years, build it up and sell it off, and then just spend the rest of my life doing good things for the world. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. You got a lot of self talk going on in your younger days, right? I mean, I haven't given you the half of
it. Yeah. Right. Looking at life and saying, you know, this isn't for me. And I certainly can understand the lost side of it, but not wanting to do that work, but then to create an industry out of nothing is, you know, huge. And then you come to Armenia to do the same. And this is 19. This is after freedom. 1991. It's 93. So the war was still going on. I came here in September of 93 for the first
time, went straight to the AUA. I figured the only way I could avoid the corruption was to try and get some young people who had somehow been indoctrinated in western thinking. So I went and put up a job posting. Like, the first day I got here at AUA for a manager to help me develop this carpet business in Armenia. And I ended up hiring a graduate from the first class, the first MBA class from AUA. And then, by the way, my hotel business is based on. I started out with
four MBA graduates from AUa. So I have a big debt to Aua. That's huge. Yeah, a huge debt to them. But this is, I think this is a challenge even today. We came here in 2006. I mean, it was completely different. Part of Yerevan was not the same. And you were there now in 1993, and it's even less the same,
less going on. But finding an indoctrinated, I think, isn't that one of the struggles today with Armenia's political system is getting kids indoctrinated to the western thinking so that they're not just hog tied to the traditional methodologies? I think you don't even have to work at it anymore. I mean, you know, people ask me because I say it's completely different environment here than it was 30 years ago.
And a good part of that is because of the government, which, despite all its shortcomings, I mean, has made a tremendous change in the country. Really? Yeah. I always have to give them credit. I can talk for hours about their shortcomings. But the world here in Armenia is completely
different than it was five years ago. And so going back to the youth, I mean, a big part of the change in Armenia was that, but an even bigger part is just that as the soviet era died off and is fading out, those people, the young people, have somehow grown up very pure and very like western thinking and just a whole different kind of human being. That's interesting because, yes, if you talk people diaspora, they're going to tell you about the shortcomings of
the government. Of course, there's the classic armenian arguments going on. But when we drove to the monastery yesterday, the day before, my comment and my question to Sandra was, are you more inspired to come and help or are you more resolved? The fact that they can't help themselves, and you're saying, yeah, they can help themselves. Oh, no doubt about it. And they're doing a lot here. But this infrastructure of this, just the street alone, where's that infrastructure coming from?
Is it the diaspora money? Is it the russian money? Why did this happen? Just this street? Yes. Downtown Yerevan in general, I don't want. To go too deep into it, but let's say there was a lot of local rich people and russian rich people that provided the funding, but that's not. Enough to sustain it. The lifestyle has to be abducted. People have to want to be able to do this. Oh, yeah. No, the economy is, I mean, developing into being very broad based and just red hot,
too. I mean. Yeah. And so then the idea for hotels came about after the carpets were kind of going, you thought, we need western style hotels, which weren't really around. I mean, saviour and the Ani hotel for a while, but that really wasn't, you know, western style. Yeah. I mean, the normal thing to do would have been to build a hotel in Yerevan, which I eventually did. But the idea, which was started in 1999, was to build hotels in the regions because at that time,
people were still following the old soviet model. They come to Armenia to visit, and they'd sit in Yerevan and take exhausting day trips to the countryside and come back to Yerevan at night. And they weren't getting to experience, really, the joys, the culture, the flavor of the countryside. So I really wanted to help open up the regions for tourism by starting regional hotels and then eventually built this one in Yerevan by Verna Sage. What does that brand stand for? What does the
two Fankian brand philosophy? What does it mean? If I go to Europe, I'm going to go to the Sofitels or I'm going to go to whatever chain. What does the two fancian chain represent? I think, first of all, it's always integrating the culture and history into modernity. So, I mean, if you see the design of my hotels, they're very traditional and very modern at the same time. And I think tastefully. So it's easy to do that badly. And I think we've avoided that. And also it's about service.
When we first started, I mean, I came to my team and I said, look, guys, this idea of hospitality, this is built in darmenian culture. All of you know what it's like to have a guest in your home and how you treat them. The idea here is that you just take that feeling and convey it to the guests in our hotels. And it's been the guiding philosophy for 23 years. And it really is embedded in the staff, the management all the way through.
You know, that is amazingly simple but amazingly brilliant at the same time because, like some of our friends, they wanted to go visit their ancestors villages. I forgot the name now, but they went yesterday, and they're literally talking to people on the street saying, I'm a cousin of, and they're like, into the house and before, you know, there's a full spread. That's right. Exactly. Forget about the rest of the day. Yeah, yeah.
But you commercialize this idea because hospitality probably wasn't the greatest asset to the leftover soviet worker. Right? Yeah, I think, actually, I never thought about it, but I think you could say there was like they were one person at home and they were another person at work, typically, you know, and I tried to bring the home mentality into the work. That's fascinating. Yeah, seems to be working. Yeah, I think so. Guests seem to like
it. So last night we went to, I had this morning on the podcast, I had Miriam, what was it? Sherlocian. Anyway, she runs the in vino wine bar. Oh, yeah. And, yeah, saga Italian. And I see a bottle of tufakian wine there. And, you know, being the diaspora and being in the wine business for 35 years, you know, I was a little reluctant to embrace the army and wine industry, frankly. You know that we know it
takes generations. You know, it takes multiple vintages to figure out what's going on in the soil, but kind of interesting to see your brand here. So what's the thought process behind venturing into the wine world? Part of it was just I always have loved farming and the idea of growing stuff. And I think partly also discovering the deep history of wine in Armenia attracted it to me. And yeah, that paired with my tourism business
means that it was a sphere I had to get into. And then once I started, I just got totally hooked. It's funny, I have to tell you this, like, you've probably heard stories like this before. A few months ago, we were finally putting together like a five year budget for the business and I was seeing based on the production that we were planning on how much investment it was going to take. And I walked out of that meeting just crushed. I was like,
that's an old story. Are you kidding? Well, so then later in the afternoon, I have a second meeting about wine, where we're tasting the wines that we just made our first production from our vineyards this year. And I tasted the wines, I got so excited, I totally forgot the pain of the investment. And I keep analogizing it to what I understand happens to women when they give birth. You know, like it's extremely painful and they hold the
baby for five minutes and suddenly they forget all the pain. Wow. And that's exactly what, what it's like. And it just keeps. It is irresistible. It grabs hold of you. Also, the conditions here are so good for making wine. I mean, we have french partners from Alsace advising us on everything. And they got attracted to Armenia because of the unique conditions and also because very particularly with global warming, the whole wine world is in panic about what's going to happen as
climate changes. And here you come to Armenia and somebody told me the highest vineyards in Europe are in Italy at like 450 meters or something. And you come to Armenia and our base is 1000 meters and then our vineyards are at twelve to 1300. So these guys are looking at it and saying this is the place of the future for wine. So all of that, I mean, it just seemed like a great place to put more money than you ever wanted to put into it, spend more money. The old adage of the wine
business. But I think it's a fascinating concept that you just said it, which is the future of the wine business. But it's also been the freaking historical part of the wine business. You're building a hotel near God of knee cave and it even goes further back than that. So here's. So I was trying to pigeonhole the concept. You talk about the new world, Australia, New Zealand, America, South America, call them new world wines and they have certain privileges because of that, because they can
do whatever they want. The French will come to California and say, wow, I get to grow whatever I want whenever I want. I don't have to worry about, you know, my local traditions. And here in Armenia, you know, is it new world or old world? Here it's new world in that it's kind of starting from scratch because the soviets interrupted it all. But it's old world and I've been doing it for 11,000 years. That seems to be the romantic part of this. Yeah,
absolutely. The part that said to you, I don't care how much money I spent on this bottle, it's fabulous, right? So the bottle I saw at Invino was your first self vintage or did you make wine from somebody else's grapes for the first? Yes, that's what this is. So yeah. Yes, Arnie from old Vines. And it's quite nice. Like 6000 year old vines, old vines like
Noah's vines, maybe even older than that. That's fascinating Ottany, at least when it came to what I've seen in Socal, obviously a hotbed of wine and lots of brands there. And I just had this conversation with Vayakashkarian. I asked the question, can Adani make world class wine? Can it do that? And are we there yet? He says we're not there yet, but you can do it structurally, the grape, the skin, the acids, all the things it has going for it. But
it takes many generations to do that. Are you consider yourself a steward of the land in this case and that you're going to hand this off? Oh yeah. To the next group, yeah. And we're doing biodynamic farming there. So it's really the ultimate like stewardship. My partners in France are very deeply into it and we've sort of drank the Kool aid along with them. So, yeah, it is very
much about stewardship. And I mean, you know, I'm sure most people realize that when you go into the wine business you should have next generations to follow in your footsteps. I won't have my own, but I will definitely see that it gets passed on. You know, the question I have of like you on the Napa Valley, you can go buy if you have enough money, you go buy that lifestyle and you can create things. You probably won't make any money but you're not going
to care because you have so much money to start with, right? But, you know, the old school families like the Corley's and the Barrett's and those families that were there early on that paid for their land a long time ago can make money doing it. And I asked the question not that long ago to a winemaker here, and I said, are those days still available to anybody to buy a piece of land?
Santa and I bought 60 acres in Paso Robles years ago and we were going to plant it, but planting it was four times the cost of the land and we weren't willing to invest in that. So does that opportunity exist to build a brand around, what, a shelf price of, let's say, $20 and have margin in there? I don't know. The cost of production here is pretty high, at least if you want to do it the right way, with low production of your fields and everything.
And I don't know. I mean, it's an odd economy because, in a way, a lot of things here are relatively expensive. I think our challenge here is going to be that we have to make wines that are up to the price level that we're. That we're stuck with. Yeah, well, biodynamics, not the least expensive way to do things. Yeah, yeah. But you chose that. You know, here's irony, I think, of biodynamic and organic farming is that it always was at some point,
right? I mean, the monks in Burgundy weren't. They were obviously organic, maybe not biodynamic, but they were organic. And up until maybe when, you know, post war, when the Germans invented copper sulfate, I mean, the French that, you know, pretty much natural. Really? I mean, I hate that word, but. And then we invent all this stuff and then we pull it away and we go, look how great we are. Right? Exactly. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's just going back in time, actually.
Exactly. And I don't think it's an excuse to create wines that taste like Kombucha or something, because I think a lot of these brands taste like rustic. You know, they don't need to taste rustic. They can still be very refined. So the Alsatian winemakers there, they came here and they thought this was pretty cool, huh? They got really excited when they came here. Really? Yeah. And how'd you find them in the first place? Actually, they came, I think it's a father and two sons, and each
father's the agronomist. One son is the winemaker and the other is the marketing guy. And father came here on an exploratory trip that I think the government had organized and maybe the french government was involved. He was here with a group and I think he was the only one of the group that just said, wow, I got to do something here. Yeah. And then we got introduced to him. Really had good chemistry and. Yeah, well, Michele Rolan
has been here, Paul Hobbes been here. I mean, there's some pretty amazing people consulting here. And I just, again, I go back to this idea. The Adonis I've tasted in California, they're okay, they're palatable wines, they're solid. But I'm wondering about their longevity. I'm wondering about their acid content. I'm wondering, I guess only time will tell, but I think most people agree that it has the potential. I mean, in 2006, you couldn't drink
anything. It was terrible. Yeah. And I mean, the worst was like, after independence, you had all these wines on the shelf and occasionally you'd get a bottle that was really good and you'd go back and buy a second one and it was undrinkable, you know, they just had no quality control whatsoever. But now it's. I think the Soviets interrupted not only the cultural growth of the economy because this place looks very european. I did a sizzlery. I'm going to send it to you.
On the Azerbaijan soldiers taking the four wineries out of Artsakh and got him back to Sarin's. A good friend of mine, I did the capellian family, I haven't spoken to the other two. And when I did that, I started to research why wineries were a spoil of war. Why would this happen? And the Germans, the Prussians destroyed vineyards as they went through France. But the Germane, the Nazis not
only kept them, they stole all the wine. And then by doing that, I started looking at videos of downtown Yadavan and, whoa, this is not the place that we visited in 2006. Right. And wine being part of this culture and the story behind it in Vino was fascinating to me that we decided to do this. So what's your ultimate goal with it? You're gonna have more than odd and e you're gonna have. Yeah, we've already, we're planting, I think we've planted five or six grapes already and I own about 36. Ha.
It's actually on a plateau. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, and by the way, I never knew until we started planting, like, how big a hectare of vines is. You sit around and you go. Because the original plan was to start with 14. When I saw it actually planted, I was like, really? It's like all that, I have to. Walk all the way out there. But I think as we go, I mean, I think we have 9 rna, two of Oskahat, and two or
three more of other grapes. And I think clearly, as we do more planting, we're going to go into more grapes. And Vaheb may have talked to you about just, he's been engaged in trying to recover old grapes that have sort of been lost or abandoned. And I'm sure that we have a lot of genetic material here that's going to be really interesting to revive. And I don't know, maybe most of us, I think, believe in armenian varietals, but some people are here planting foreign ones and
doing really well at it, so. Well, we were at Armas. Victoria's a good friend, and she said, yeah, some oligarch just bought a bunch of hectares next to her, and they're only planting french varietals. And so this is the business of wine. Right. So I actually thought when we first came here in 2006, that Ottomany wasn't even a Vidis vine for a grape because it was so bad. I thought it was just they're trying to make wine out of non wine grape. Oh, gosh. That's not
the case, obviously. I was surprised to read that it was. Yeah. But then the marketing of wine and the business of wine is a whole different part of the romance, and it's not romantic, and it's very difficult. And so, yeah, french varietals, when you put Merlot on a bottle, is probably going to be more attractive to most buyers than not any. But I will say there was a brand years ago, came through the office. It was, I think it was moldavian,
something like that. Bulgarian Moldavian. It was a merlot. So they put Merlot on the label, which is a very american thing to do. And it was called Hickory Ridge. Yeah. Really? Because they wanted to name it something that Americans might. It didn't do. Well, I always thought that was family. So. Sounds like based on expression that, yeah, no, we're going to stick with the armenian varietals. We're going to try and develop that worldwide, get people
used to what we're doing. Yeah. I mean, my whole reason to be here is not to make money in this country. I mean, I like to make money at what I do, but the main thing is to really, it's cultural revival. It's revival of the nation, and that's our heritage. So that's what I'm interested in. So you think in the short term, politically, what's. I don't want to get peel that back too far. It's not a political show, but you have a lot of investment in all
of this. And to see what's going on in the north, how the government's reacting to that. We have a chance to save all this and make sure it pursues. And I know the diaspora is behind it all. Armenia? Yes, we're talking about Armenia. I'm trying to dance around the subject without being too sensitive. Well, I can just say, I mean, everybody here is constantly aware of the risks that we're facing. And if we any day, forget it, our neighbors will remind us of the risks the next
day. But when you're here and working and living in the environment, the first thing is, part of the problem is you walk out onto the street every day and it feels so good here. It's hard to imagine that we're under siege from our neighbors. And that's a real source of hope, because it's really. The country's on a roll. The lifestyle couldn't be better. I have all kinds of friends who have moved here along with me from other places, and we all just think this is priceless.
That's what it takes. That's what it takes. We were in a van yesterday with a woman who went through the same conversation. And the woman, Miriam, is the same. She came here, you know, I think they opened ten years ago, but she came as a teenager and she was complaining to her mother, and now she's like no other. And she came from Granada Hills. Really? Yeah. Taj Mahal, right? I mean. Yep, yep, yep. It's fascinating because my brother in law, Gregg Noel, has always
pitch that idea. And my wife and I didn't see it the first time here, but we see it now. We understand this. So you haven't been here since 2006? No. Oh, man. Well, now you shot. I'm not going to point any fingers. But you're gonna anyway. Yeah, but. Well, we're. And Connor wanted to come and he hadn't seen him. I don't think Sarah had come here on. My oldest daughter had come on a diverted greek school thing, and then the Greek, I guess there was so dangerously diverted her here, and
then she had an experience. I think it was 2010 or something. I don't remember that. But for sure. We'll be back. In fact, the other night, we were at the bird cage. You know this bar? No, sorry. Well, they might start pointing to faking one day. Okay. And I looked at Al Kabalov, my friend. I said, I don't feel like I'm in, what was Armenia. I feel like I'm part of Europe. It could be in Paris. I could be anywhere. No kidding. Not that you want to emulate that.
Yeah. But the question I had to, a lot of people on the bus with us, I think I just said this, like, were you, are we inspired to fix it, or we resolved to think it's never going to change. And I think you can see that what you're doing is making a change. How's the occupancy of the hotels, for instance? Oh, well, it's one of the surprise benefits of the Ukraine invasion, you know, I mean, it's really been a boost for tourism here, fortunately. I mean, until recently, the european tourism that
stopped during COVID hadn't recovered. And we were really trying to understand it, but it seems like it's also growing back. Occupancy is good. Yeah. We're just wondering if and when the war ends, what it's gonna, you know, what it's gonna mean. Because a lot of the, probably half the guests here are russian. They were in the elevator this
morning. Yeah. But you can imagine that if somebody comes, experiences this, realizes this is the playground of sorts, a different culture that they're not used to, that they'll come back. Absolutely. And interestingly, I met a group of jewish immigrates from Russia who had come here last week, and one of them, kind of the leader of the group said, I came from
Russia. I landed here, I got my papers to go to Israel, and I went to Israel, and I went to another, some european country, and I said, I want to come back to Armenia. This is the best lifestyle I can find. Yeah. And they all
felt that way. So I can't say it's true for every Russian that's here, but it really, I mean, you can imagine, you know, in a country where you've got the government breathing down your neck every day in Russia, that you come here, whatever else you can complain about here you are really free to say what you want to do, what you want within the laws. It's a very light existence. Yeah. Very western
concept. Very, very. Exactly. So what do we do with all these empty soviet buildings that are just dying on the vine out there to change the countryside, change the drive, which prompted the question I asked you. But, I mean, there's looked like a tale of two cities. Oh, yeah. You mean in the regions. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. A friend of mine years ago had the idea that they should have, like, a worksite WPA project here to put people to work tearing down ugly stuff. Yeah. No, I mean.
Right, because you drive out there and you're going, wow, this. We went to the other direction, to a camp, a youth camp. Not like the nazi youth camp. Good. Not here. And fascinated by some of the modern construction and equality and the fit and fish, the western fit and finish. And then next to this burned out building, so to speak. Yeah, it's a bit of a problem. I mean, of course, the hope is these things will get repurposed to the extent that they're soundly constructed, but, yeah.
So back to the wine thing for a second. You brought us something with Vahe that I think is very important. And that is, I read this book called, I think, medieval wine. Wine in the medieval Armenia goes way back. It's got probably 100 different varietals listed in pictures of them. Right. And I'm fascinated by the italian varietals, particularly the whites. I think one of the best wines in the world as far as white
wine is concerned. And a lot of that's going on in Umbria, where they're finding odd vines and their resurrection, the DNA of these interesting varietals and modeling them, and they're really quite good. Complex, interesting. How's this thing going? Are you aware of what Vaheg Kuzgarn has been doing with them? And have we found anything? Yeah, I mean, constantly finding.
I mean, the concept. You can imagine it's really intriguing and exciting, this idea of rediscovering, because, like you said, when, you know, there were 100 varietals at that time, there must be some of them that are just spectacular and different. And so it's kind of like the attraction of detective work. You want to get in there and dig around and see what there is. So I don't know. I'm not up on Vah's work lately. I know
other people have taken up the same thing. I mean, they're, again, among those of us who really want to help revive armenian winemaking. Definitely an interest in finding new grapes. I mean, we've already been exploring ones that are already planted because apparently there are people who have small plots around the country that are from I don't know how long ago, and they don't even know what the grape is, but it's something different. And. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, it is. That's very
cool. The concept of what grows together goes together. The concept of natural selection of grapes, particularly vitis vinifera, in various regions of the world for a reason. My brother in law insists that we bring oddity to Napa Valley. And, you know, you know, in the wine business you don't typically do that. You know, you run some, especially when. Nobody'S heard of it. Exactly. And you try to determine whether it's a good fit. You know, you're talking about
altitudes. Very important in the wine world in Malbec. I talked about this earlier with Vahe, but, you know, they're experimenting with Malbec at like 5000ft and they're coming up with some pretty interesting wines. And there's one brand from a french family, Arnot, a thousand feet, 20, 00, 30, 00, 50. So you can. They're bottling each level separately and the wines are different. You can say different, structurally different. And the character is different. It's really fascinating
to watch. And I always wonder what the end game is like. I asked a lot of winemakers, what is the end game? You're trying to produce the best thing you can based on what you've got. Are you trying to express this district best you can? What is the end game? Good question as to all the refinement and all this colonial selection. All the. And I think Vahe and I kind of came with the conclusion that it really is. I got this word, I haven't used this word. I got it from a bulgarian song
and she's used the word typicity. And I don't mean typicity in the typical of. I mean typicity in that it's representative, that it's representing where your vineyards are. And you can take your bottle of toufe and bring it to LA and put it on the table and say, this is who I am. This is what I was. Wow. And I think that's the end game. Or you just want to make as much money as you can. No kidding. I know you already said that. Yeah. It's
fascinating. I mean, I think it's part of this unexplainable attraction of wine. You're just always in pursuit of something and it feels great when you find it, even though it doesn't necessarily translate into dollars. It won't. Yeah, it won't. Right. But it's. You just nailed it on the head. The question I asked many winemakers is I don't get a direct answer because there isn't one. But what is it about wine? You don't feel like this when you drink bourbon.
You don't feel, you know, people chase scotches and things, but you don't feel this way, you don't feel this way about beer. And, in fact, beer. The brewmaster's job is to make sure it tastes the same. But wine makes you think. Somehow I wonder if it's partly. I was out in Napa and Sonoma last year, a couple years ago
with your stuff. I remember I had a day with a winemaker in a small vineyard, and we were talking about it, and I'm still really new to wine, so it was the first time that I understood how many different variables there are that go into making a wine what it is. And, I mean, they're like thousands. And they were telling me, you know, they were saying, like, we all really cooperate with each other out here. We don't mind giving away our secrets and whatever.
And I did some questioning, and I understood that part of the reason why they're not possessive is that there's so many variables. He can tell the guy next to him exactly what he's doing, and that guy's going to come up with a different product. And so I think that's part of the fascination of wine, is dealing with this infinite variety of variables. Yeah, the permutations are endless. Exactly. And so do we have that here? Do we have that in Armenia where you're sharing these secrets and
sharing that secrets, sharing these methodologies? Do we have enough of them to understand the differences? I think there is a community here that does share a lot of. Yeah, I think my winemaker and some of her contemporaries are pretty open with each other. Did you say her? Of course. Wow. This is a big subject. I always hire women, if I can, in this country, especially some of the. Women we've seen around here. But no, I'd be sarcastic because women in wine is a huge
subject right now. Oh, really? A lot of wonderful winemakers on my show recently that were women. And in America, the idea of a female winemaker is rather prevalent. And there's, I think, 25% of the winemakers in California are women. Now, the energy's put in executive roles. Now, small wineries don't have executive roles. Sometimes a winemaker is the executive, but they're trying to now get the population at the higher levels of
management of the winery to be women as well. But that's really fascinating that, a, she's alsatian, and b, it's a woman. No, she's armenian. Oh, she's armenian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The also. That's right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Where does she get educated? Partly here and partly in Germany. Really? Yeah, yeah. And she. Her whole fascination was to do what you're doing. Bring. Get the industry. I don't know how she came to it because she was a human relay. An HR
specialist for that, of course. And I don't know, but she went to EvN Academy here and got her basic training, and I guess it just. She really got hooked. That's really cool. Yeah. I'm very proud. I had an intern, Lisa Kasabian. She came during last summer, and she did most of my talking point notes for upcoming podcasts. And she got so intrigued by the women that she heard speak that she applied to Cornell and Davis oenology school, and she got accepted to both. Oh, really?
So she's going to Cornell this semester to study wine. She's from states or from here? From states. Glendale. We're gonna be kicked out of here soon. Yeah. Well, it's 1230. It's already been 45 minutes. What a great opportunity to meet you and discuss what you're thinking and doing and the face behind the legend, behind the carpets, behind the wine now. Such a joy to meet you. Yeah, me, too. Paul, I'm glad you're on the show. And we're gonna do it again when we come back out. Cause we will
be coming back out in next month. Right. We're headed to Paris after this, and we're gonna have dinner with the cladstrups. The cladstrups is fascinating. Couple who wrote the book wine and war that I found during the. During my research for the Azerbaijan war. Wow. Wineries. And, boy, when they talk about the Nazis and what they did. You know, Hitler had, like, 100,000 bottles in his cellar. He didn't even drink. But there was a spoil of war, and I thought it was a fascinating conversation.
Look forward to spending more time with you soon. Thanks, Paul. It's a pleasure. Cheers. Thank you for listening to wine talks with Paul Callum Carrion. Don't forget to subscribe, because there's more great interviews on their way. Folks, have a great time out there in the wine world. Cheers.