Lebanon Wines a Market Favourite

The owner of 'Massaya' winery checks the barrels at the cellar in the village of Taanayel of the Lebanese Bekaa Valley on August 20, 2010. In the heart of the Bekaa Valley, a few miles from a temple dedicated to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, Lebanon's vineyards are in full bloom as the country edges into the global wine market. (Getty Images via Daylife)

AFP reports on Lebanon's wine industry:

In the heart of the Bekaa Valley, a few miles from a temple dedicated to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, Lebanon's vineyards are in full bloom as the country edges into the global wine market.

"After European wine and new world wine, the wine of the so-called old world is emerging" as a market favourite, explains Ramzi Ghosn of the Massaya winery.

"And Lebanon, with its culinary and viniculture traditions, is playing an avant-garde role in the region."

Along with his brother, Ghosn is leading a new wave of Lebanese wines, using French grape varieties Merlot, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Syrah and Chardonnay, into the global market.

From a mere five wineries in 1998, he says, the tiny Mediterranean country now boasts more than 30 labels.

Most of them are small or medium-sized establishments banking on quality to set them apart, and some have already landed awards in international fairs and are now featured on the wine lists of Paris and London.
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"It's a niche market, so small that it piques people's curiosity," according to brothers Karim and Sandro Saade, who launched the Marsyas line in 2005 with the help of world-renowned wine guru Stephane Derenoncourt, a consultant for several prominent clients including film and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola.

"The future of Lebanon's wine lies in small wineries," Sandro Saade said.

"The fact that a country is famed for having produced wine since antiquity ... is attractive to consumers and that is a major factor in relaunching these projects," Derencourt told AFP.

The Bekaa Valley, a fertile region in eastern Lebanon, is blessed with the ideal climate for wine production. At 900 metres (2,952 feet) above sea level, it is rich in chalky soil, rain, and long, hot summers.
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"The taste of the land should overpower that of a standard Merlot or Syrah," Sandro said.

Khoury stands apart with his "organic" cellars which are located on a hill overlooking the city of Zahle, where legend has it that Noah, named in the Bible as the first winemaker, is buried.
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"It was hard," Khoury told AFP. "But today we export 40 percent of our production."

Around 15 percent of Lebanon's wine -- which brings in annual revenues estimated at around 30 million dollars (23.4 million euros) -- is exported, mainly to France and England.
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Carlos Ghosn, the French CEO of carmakers Nissan and Renault who is of Lebanese origin, created a stir this spring when he launched his Ixsir wine, the latest label from his Wines of Lebanon winery.
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Back in the Bekaa, tourists flocking to the famed Roman temples of Baalbek are increasingly stopping by local cellars for a wine-tasting tryst, and the Saade brothers plan to build Lebanon's first wine museum.

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Related Posts:

• Lebanon's Vineyards

Severe Drought + Famine Warning in Eastern Syria

Image Source: USDA Commodity Intelligence Report

The National reports on what appear to be serious conditions in eastern Syrian:

Already struggling to recover from one of the country’s worst droughts on record, Syria’s agricultural sector has been dealt another blow, with up to one-third of its wheat crop damaged by a virulent disease.

Yellow Rust infections have been “significant” in Syria’s breadbasket eastern region, according to farmers and officials. With harvests now being collected, they warned that production of soft wheat could be cut by half compared with last year.

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“It has come at a difficult time,” he said. “There have also been cuts in subsidies on fuel and fertilizer. Many farmers have gone out of business.”

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In Syria, wheat is broadly classified as either hard or soft, the former used for production of pasta while soft wheat is used for bread. ...

With the Syrian economy heavily dependent on agriculture, the government has set up a committee to evaluate the problem and to troubleshoot the situation. ...

Virulent new forms of Yellow Rust have hit wheat crops across the globe, with devastating effects in some African countries, where up to 90 per cent of harvests have been wiped out. ...

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It represents another setback for farmers in Syria’s Jazeera region and comes at a time when emergency aid donated by the international community is still being sent out to drought-ravaged areas.

The United Nations this week began distributing food packages to 200,000 people in Raqqa, Hasika and Deir Ezzor in an effort to prevent serious malnutrition.

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The [UN's World Food Program] WFP has identified 300,000 people as being in need of a two-month supply of emergency food aid, but it has only received funding sufficient for only 190,000.

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One farm worker in Raqqa, who asked not to be named, complained that he and his family were in a dire situation and literally had nothing to left to eat.

“We’re starving out here; we’re poor, there’s no money, no food and we’ve had no help,” he said.

Water shortages in 2008 and 2009 hit the region hard. Studies have shown that 70 per cent of livestock was wiped out by the drought because it was impossible to grow animal fodder. Wheat production in 2008 dropped to 1.3 million tonnes from 2.4m tonnes the previous year.

The crisis has forced hundreds of thousands of people off the land, with many living as refugees around Damascus, Aleppo and Dera in southern Syria. Many have fled the country entirely, looking for work in neighboring Lebanon.

... Last month, Kuwait agreed to fund a project to improve irrigation in some of the worst-hit regions, while the Syrian authorities are pushing through long-term reforms to improve agricultural efficiency.

Damascus has firmly put the blame for the drought on global warming, but some Syrian agricultural experts have said poor government management of water resources and inappropriate farming are the real underlying reasons.

As part of a national food security policy, wheat in Syria was heavily subsidized for decades despite being water-intensive, encouraging farmers to dig illegal wells that have dried up ground-water supplies. Those subsidies have been stopped but the environmental damage caused by excessive water extraction is likely to take decades to repair, even if rainfall is consistent.

Readers can also refer to the FAO Syria Drought Emergency site for more details.

Lebanon's Vineyards

The FT reports on Lebanon's booming boutique wine industry:

Domaine des Tourelles and Coteaux de Botrys are two very different vineyards, lying on opposite sides of Lebanon.

The former, in the eastern Bekaa Valley, is one of the country’s oldest wineries. Production was erratic during and after the 1975-1990 civil war when the vineyard was best known for its arak, an aniseed drink.

Now the Issa family, the new majority owners and managers of Domaine des Tourelles, plan to raise production from 80,000 to 100,000 bottles per year.

In contrast, Coteaux de Botrys was started near the costal town of Batroun in 1998 by Joseph Bitar, a retired general. Since his death, Mr Bitar’s daughters see it as their mission to carry on his work and to increase production from 40,000 to 65,000 bottles a year over five years.

Nayla Bitar muses on the explosion of small wineries in Lebanon. There are now eight near Batroun alone. “In 1998 people questioned my father’s wisdom of putting money in vines. Now they’re all doing it,” she says.

In the past 15 years, the number of Lebanese wine producers has exploded from five in 1995 to 33 this year – and counting.
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With a total production of just 6m-7m bottles a year, of which about half is exported, Lebanese growers can only go the boutique way, says Michael Karam, an expert on Lebanese wine whose guide detailing all 33 vineyards is due to be published later this year.

Even Ksara and Kefraya, the largest, most established vineyards, produce only 2m bottles each, small by international standards.
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The absence of economies of scale means that Lebanese wines, even from the larger producers, are relatively dear. One of the cheapest wines of one of the larger producers may sell in the UK for $14.
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Until now Serge Hochar, who heads Chateau Musar and who chairs UVL, the union of wine growers, has been one of the main promoters of the image of Lebanese wine abroad, especially in the UK where it is relatively well-known.
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The large growers feel that they have established Lebanese wines as a quality brand abroad and worry that less professional newcomers may tarnish that image.

However, a UVL proposal to set up a government-sanctioned wine institute to control quality has been stuck in red tape for years.

The smaller wine makers, on the other hand, insist that they are the real quality producers, alleging that some of the larger and older wineries use grapes from different areas of the country rather than from well-managed vineyards. Some of them favour the introduction of what is known in France as the AOC, appellation d’origine controllé, which certifies the origins of grapes.

Even so, some of the new producers acknowledge the trailblazing role that Mr Hochar has played.

“He certainly did a great job making Lebanese wines known,” says Sandro Saadé, who together with his brother Karim recently started new vineyards in Syria and Lebanon, Bargylus and Marsyas, respectively.

The Saadés are typical of some of the new breed of Lebanese wine makers who include rich expatriate investors such as Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault and Nissan.
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