How Iraqi and Israeli Immigrants created one of Napa’s great wine brands

At Simon Family Estate, Sam Simon and Maayan Koschitzky have forged a friendship and made some great wine

DINNER AT THE KOSCHITZKYS’ Napa Valley home—when Sam and Nada Simon have flown in from Michigan to join—might involve baba ghanoush, tabbouleh or fattoush, lamb marinated in Baharat (a spice blend that is to Middle Eastern cooking what garam masala is to Indian cuisine) and baklava, always baklava—Dana Koschitzky is a pastry chef, after all.

The families hail from two disparate parts of the Middle east, but they join together over the shared flavors of their tables. And over the last four or five years, they’ve come together over personal experience too, their tragic family histories a springboard for launching one of Napa’s newest exciting wine brands: Simon Family Estate.

It’s an alliance of two immigrant families. The Simons are from Iraq, the Koschitzkys from Israel. Over a lineup of new Simon Family wines recently, Sam Simon and Maayan Koschitzky—who lovers of great Napa bottles know as the director of winemaking for Philippe Melka’s acclaimed winemaking group Atelier Melka—spin their very separate family stories.

What my iPhone records, against the backdrop of new tragedy looming in Eastern Europe as we speak, is eerily similar displacement and loss, but also the synergy of parallel life paths.

Sam Simon’s story begins in the Armenian genocide of the early 1900s, in which his grandfather lost his entire family, surviving only by escaping across the border from Turkey into northern Iraq.

FULL STORY How Iraqi and Israeli Immigrants Teamed Up to Create One of Napa’s Great New Wine Brands (Robb Report)