Tirê Hov: The Kurdish Wild Grape and the Mountain Where Wine Was Born Scientists who study the origin of wine have a name for the place where it began: the Grape’s Fertile Triangle. It is a vast upland region bounded by three mountain ranges: the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey, the northern Zagros Mountains of western Iran, and the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Within this triangle, the wild ancestor of every wine grape and every table grape in

Helise: The Kurdish Wedding Wheat and the Cauldron That Takes All Night In the Kurdish province of Ağrı — Agiri, the land named for Mount Ararat, the great volcanic peak that stands on the edge of the Kurdish highland and the Armenian plateau — a dish called helise is made for weddings and feasts. It is the same dish known as keşkek across Anatolia and as herse or harisa across the wider region: whole wheat berries and lamb slow-cooked together in huge cauldrons for an enti

Saqez: The Kurdish Wild Mastic and the Zagros Tree That Weeps Resin In the Zagros mountain forests of Rojhelat — the four Iranian Kurdish provinces where the great mountain range runs south through Kurdistan Province, Kermanshah, Ilam, and West Azerbaijan — there grows a tree that this series has not yet named on its own. It is Pistacia atlantica, the Atlas pistachio or Kurdish wild pistachio, a gnarled, drought-resistant tree of the oak-pistachio forest belt that covers th