Under a New Sun

I ntroducing people to the pleasures of Persian cuisine has been a lifelong passion for me, and I have pondered the connections with wine for many years. But the genesis of this book was pure serendipity.

It happened this way. In 2003 I was invited to a three-day conference in Napa, California, to talk about Persian cooking and give demonstrations. The venue was copia, a museum and cultural center whose mission, in its own words, “is to investigate and celebrate the culture of the collective table through wine, food and the arts.” Before leaving for California, I received a call from Darioush Khaledi, an Iranian-American like myself. Explaining that he was a sponsor of the copia program, he said that he appreciated what I had done in teaching people about Persian food, which is one of the world’s oldest and richest culinary traditions yet is only now gaining its rightful recognition in the West. He added that he was in the process of building a Napa Valley winery whose architecture was inspired by Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the first great Persian empire.