We know that wine is very old. The first thing Noah did after he landed on Mount Ararat and the waters subsided was to plant a vine and make wine. Move on a few millennia and we have Joseph in jail with the baker and the wine pourer (sommelier) of the Pharaoh. There are many other Biblical accounts on the use and importance of wine and it is so suitable then that the earliest wine makers to meticulously document their art, were the monks toiling the lands of the monasteries and making really good wine that they eventually sold. We know the weaving industry is very old, from textiles to carpets. The nomads needed tents, bedding and clothing and weaving was developed to fulfil these needs.
What then make these two cultures survive through time?
Well, it is exactly TIME that gives it its longevity. Few items become better with time and these two cultures produce exactly such products that can only really be appreciated with the passing of time. There is some magical alchemy that happens when the grape leaves the vineyard and enters the barrel. The process of fermentation with the help of time transforms it into a liquid that captures the aromas and energies of the place in which it grows and ages. The same magical alchemy happens when the weaver takes each strain of meticulously dyed wool to create a whole masterpiece with each woven knot and it is only with the passing of time that the colours will settle into the intended colouring of the wool dyer.
If you could ever have a picture made of what a good old wine tastes like, there is no doubt that a Persian carpet would be it. The complexity of colour and design matches the complexity of flavours and aromas in a wine. Just as every bottle of wine holds its little secrets in the flavours, a Persian carpets holds its little secrets in the woven pattern that can be read like an old manuscript by those who know the language. The great difference between them is that when you open that bottle of wine and drank it, the taste and flavours can only live on in your memory; but a Persian carpet can be felt and touched and looked at for generations.
It seems as if an invisible power helps both these cultures survive and evolve through wars, invasions and changes of mankind, sometimes even pushed to the brink of extinction. That is possibly its’ greatest magic: that the people who make it come and go, but the art of transforming a grape into wine and wool into a Persian carpet survives from generation to generation, thanks to the farmers and weavers who pass on their skills. It links past with present, it transports us back to that exact moment when the wine maker dreamed of what this wine would become and the weaver envisioned cutting his completed carpet off the loom. Once the bug has bitten you, you will never get enough of either. The thirst for knowledge on it and the almost quasi-religious experience both gives you is what eventually turns a consumer into a collector, and a collector into a treasurer.
