At the present time the process of manufacture is similar to what it was then, in that the grape-juice is collected in large Ali-Baba-like jars and buried in the ground.

Alexander the Great is said to have followed the festive example of his royal predecessor, and to have drunk deep in the majestic halls of Persepolis.

It has been supposed by some that he caused the splendid palaces there to be set on fire in a drunken freak.
As a pendant to the story of a lady's discovery, in the time of Jamshed, of wine as an efficacious cure for nervous headache, another is told which ascribes to a lady the withdrawal of a royal decree against the sale and use of wine.

The Shah Hussein, on his accession to the throne in 1694, displayed his religious zeal by forbidding the sale of wine, and he ordered the destruction of all the stock of it that was in the royal cellars at Ispahan.

But his grandmother, by feigning herself ill, and wholly dependent upon wine for cure, not only prevailed upon him to revoke the decree, but also persuaded him to drink some in pure regard to herself, with the result that he fell away from priestly influence and became a tippler.