All these wines resemble in strength those that are now made in Australia.
Something is wanting in the mode of manufacture to make the wine capable of improvement with keeping, and also of bearing transport.

The advent of the Russian road will probably lead to the development of Kasvin's large area of fruitful vines, and the success which has attended vineyard industry at Derbend, on the Caspian, may encourage similar enterprise there.
As neither law nor custom forbids the manufacture of wine by non-Mohammedans, the cultivation of the grape spreads, and the making of wine increases.

From this it may be inferred, as there is little export of wine from Persia, that all the produce is not consumed by non-Mohammedans.

As a matter of fact, the religious law which forbids wine to Mohammedans is not rigidly observed; in truth, they are not all total abstainers, and the delightful poison, as chronicled by Moulla Akbar, is known to be a convenient remedy for all manner of moods, ills, and complaints, nervous, imaginary, and real.

They have been described as drinking well when they do break the religious law, for they have a saying that 'there is as much sin in a glass as in a flagon.' The Persians have never thoroughly accommodated themselves to the creed of their Semitic conquerors; they show profound respect for the externals of Mohammedanism, and are sincere in their practice of piety and the obligations of religion and charity; but they have always indulged in the fancies and ideas of the great school of free-thinking philosopher Sofis, whose observance of the ordinances of severe and joyless life is notedly lax.
The weather was lovely as we journeyed over the Kasvin plain to Tehran, towards the end of September.