Geoffrey Dean reports back from his time in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon
2 July, 2012
by Geoffrey Dean
The Bekaa Valley is secure again, and its wineries are welcoming
visitors with open arms. That is the message the Lebanese are keen to
promote, notwithstanding the destabilizing events in neighbouring
Syria, and having just got back from a trip to the Bekaa, I would
happily concur.
The British ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, informed me in Beirut
that the financially-motivated gang that had initiated kidnappings in
the valley last year have been caught. They were still at large when
Arblaster & Clarke, the specialist wine tours company, were unable to
take their clients to the Bekaa last November.
The Foreign Office’s travel advisory against visiting the valley has
now been lifted, albeit with a couple of provisos to stick to the main
roads and go with a driver who knows the area well. I did that, and
had no problems whatsoever. There are regular military checkpoints,
including one a few hundred metres from the entrance to the Kefraya
winery, but these felt more reassuring than alarming.
More than just oenological delights await those who do make it to the
Bekaa, for in the northern end of the valley stands one of the world’s
great archaeological sites, the second century Roman ruins of Baalbek.
From there, it is an easy drive to the many vineyards that have
sprung up since the end of the civil war 22 years ago when there were
just five wineries in the country. Now, there are nearly forty.
Of these, it is not just the celebrated Chateau Musar that is
producing high quality red wines but also the likes of Domaine des
Tourelles (with their ‘Syrah du Liban’), Kefraya (‘Comte de M’) and
Massaya (‘Gold Reserve’). Others to have made an impact include
Domaine Wardy, Clos St Thomas and Ixsir. The latter’s newly-completed
$10m winery in Batroun, north Lebanon won the ‘Green Good ‘design
award last year in Chicago. A botanical garden sits on top of its 30
or so stainless steel tanks.
Sunday lunch in the middle of the vines at Massaya has become
something of a Bekaa institution. Over a feast of wonderful Lebanese
cuisine there, the Ghosn brothers, co-owners with heavyweight French
partners, passionately extolled their belief in the future of Lebanese
wine.
“The fact that there has been this big expansion shows how dynamic and
vibrant the sector is here,” Ramzi Ghosn, the winemaker, said. “We are
not trying to imitate Bordeaux, Australia or Argentina, but to revive
the legacies of our ancestors, the Phoenicians, who made wine here
5,000 years ago. The Romans built the Temple of Bacchus, the god of
wine, at Baalbek to thank the Phoenicians. We want to express our
terroir.”
With its height above sea level of 1,000m or more (giving it a wide
diurnal temperature range), 3200 hours of annual sunshine, guaranteed
water supply from the snowmelt of flanking mountain ranges and almost
complete absence of pests and diseases, the Bekaa is a natural
vineyard site.
“There’s wind every day in the Bekaa,” Ghosn revealed. “Powdery mildew
is the only threat here, which is a big plus, although conditions are
not ideal for making white wines. So we’ve planted white varieties
higher up at 1600m on Mt Lebanon, where a new winery will be ready
next year.”
Not far from Massaya can be found Kefraya, which has 430 hectares
under vine, and produces two million bottles per annum (second only in
volume to Chateau Ksara ). Fabrice Guiberteau, the likeable French
winemaker at Kefraya, took up his post three days after the end of the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. He told me an amusing anecdote
about one of his predecessors at the winery, Yves Morard, who was
caught in middle of an artillery battle between the Syrian and Israeli
armies in 1984.
Seeking refuge in the Kefraya vineyards, the long-haired, bearded
Frenchman, who had no ID on him, ran into a platoon of Israeli
soldiers, who mistook him for a terrorist and despatched him to a Tel
Aviv jail. His protestations that he was only a winemaker were only
accepted ten days later when he had drawn up intricate plans of the
winery, and passed a tough wine exam the Israelis insisted on setting
him. He was then allowed to fly back to France.
“The geopolitical situation,” as Ghosn puts it, has always been
something Lebanese winemakers have had to live with. Two vintages were
completely lost in the civil war of 1975-1990, and complications arose
when Israel’s forces invaded the country just before the harvest in
2006 (not leaving until just after it).
“We created a flag with the Musar emblem on it and flew it on the
grape trucks when they had to make the 70-kilometre journey from the
Bekaa to the winery,” Gaston Hochar, Musar’s general manager, told me
when I visited it in Ghavir, just north of Beurut. “But we got the
grapes here and made the wine without any problems. “
Much more taxing than the Israeli invasion was the extreme heat of the
2010 growing season when temperatures exceeded 40C for three weeks,
hitting 48C for three days. “We had never had that before,” Hochar
admitted. “We lost 35% of the crop, with our yield dipping to between
16 and 20 hl/ha.” Alcohol levels, therefore, are perhaps the Lebanese
winemakers’ biggest headache, and it was no surprise to hear from
Guiberteau that he uses reverse osmosis to reduce alcohol for the
majority of Kefraya’s wines.
Kefraya’s commitment to quality is such that it is the first (and as
yet only) Lebanese winery to install the state-of-the-art Bucher
Vaslin ‘Optical Eye’ sorting equipment. “There are only 40 worldwide,
and we took delivery in 2009 of one of the first ten made,” Guiberteau
said. “It is fabulous for our top wines.”
After tasting the unreleased 2009 'Comte de M' with him, I was bowled
over by the concentration and complexity of this cabernet/syrah blend.
This is a vintage to rival the superb 1996 (awarded by 91 points by
Parker), and underlines how Lebanese wine is continuing its upward
trend.
