[ Mahnaz Westerberg ]Moonlight,
Moonlight,
and everything after.
Mahnaz is Persian for moonlight. This is the story of the woman who carries the name, and how a Persian kitchen, a Paris art school and a life of making beautiful things led to a ranch in Creston.
[ A Persian household ]The only girl
The only girl
among seven.
Mahnaz grew up in a Persian household, the only girl among seven children. The kitchen was the center of the house, and her mother was the center of the kitchen: cooking and singing at the same time, the counter green with fresh herbs, olive oil shimmering in the pan.
She lost her mother when she was ten. From then on she ran the household and helped raise her youngest brother, still a baby. She learned to cook seriously, and to make a home feel cared for.
[ The making ]She cooked.
She cooked.
She designed clothes.
She painted.
Long before there was a ranch, there was an eye. She designed clothing and began to paint while she was still a girl, and she read everything she could find about people and about business.
Taste, for Mahnaz, was never borrowed. It was practiced, every day, in a kitchen, at a sewing table and at an easel.
[ Paris ]Eighteen, and paying
Eighteen, and paying
her own way.
At eighteen she moved to Paris to study at the Beaux-Arts, and she paid for it herself: two jobs during the year and, in the summers, a business importing and exporting designer clothing. One summer paid for a whole year in Paris.
Paris taught her that you can feel the difference between something made quickly and something made with care, long before you can explain it.
[ California ]Farsi, then French,
Farsi, then French,
then English.
She came to California and learned English as an adult, her third language. She raised a family, built businesses in several states, and became a top-producing real estate agent in Palo Alto.
Through all of it she kept cooking for the people she loved, with the olive oil at the center of the table, the way her mother had.
[ The ranch ]
Then, the olive.
Rancho Mahnaz is where all of it meets: the kitchen of her childhood, the eye she trained in Paris, and the discipline of a woman who has never been handed anything.
She chooses every blend, and she signs and numbers every bottle of Liquid Gold herself. The 2026 Liquid Gold is made in her mother's memory.
This 2026 Release began as a memory. It is inspired by my mother, who filled our home with music while cooking and taught me to believe in the beauty and healing of the olive tree.Mahnaz, from the letter in every box of Liquid Gold
[ From the ranch ]
Letters from Mahnaz.
New releases, harvest notes and recipes from her table. Not often.
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