Can An Old Dog Teach Us New Tricks?
By Courtney Leatherman Reprinted with permission from Vineyard & Winery Management, January/February 2000. Legend has it that the first table wine grapes came from Armenia. Now, centuries later, a unique system for securing today’s grape vines has come out of the same ancient land. Two Armenian-Americans, K. George Najarian and his daughter Nancy, brought the system to the United States. They werenât particularly focused on the region’s fine wines and cognacs when they first began traveling to Armenia in 1987. They went to the then-Soviet Republic simply to learn more about their ancestors. But the two kept returning on humanitarian missions to help the struggling land-locked country. After a devastating earthquake in 1988, George and his wife, Dr. Carolann Najarian, started a relief organization, The Armenian Health Alliance. A few years later, Nancy worked there as an English teacher to MBA students and then as a consultant on economic and development issues to governmental and non-g
