Tim Almond

I was in the Waitrose in Marlborough collecting a few things, when I decided to get a few bottles of wine, completely forgetting the Thresher’s 40% off.

Most notably, I picked up a bottle of Chateau Musar, which comes from Lebanon. In a way, because I’ve never had wine from Lebanon before, but I wouldn’t buy it just for that. Chateau Musar is, by accounts, seriously big wine and much loved by wine lovers for its unique flavour.

The other thing is that Chateau Musar comes from the Bekaa Valley. So, as well as the normal problems of weather, vine fungi and so on, the owners also have to worry about things like bombings (they were harvesting chardonnay during the Israel/Lebanon fighting this year, as well as getting some bullet holes in their buildings in the 80s).

There’s also a interview with Serge Hochar, who owns and makes the wine at Musar as a podcast on GrapeRadio.com (I’m not into podcasts, but I like this one). I thought it was interesting, as it covered things that I never knew about producing wine in Lebanon, which I would have assumed would have produced tough wines. But at altitude, the climate drops to something similar to Burgundy.

Tags: Wine //