Serge Hochar, who navigated Chateau Musar, his family’s winery in Lebanon, through 15 years of civil war as Musar became one of the most admired wine producers in the world, died on Wednesday in Acapulco, Mexico. He was 75. He had been vacationing with his family and died while swimming in the ocean, said Catherine Miles, a vice president of Broadbent Selections, Musar’s American importer. No cause was announced.
Mr. Hochar (pronounced HO-shar) oversaw production for Musar, but he was more than a winemaker. He was also an entrepreneur who crisscrossed six continents promoting his idiosyncratic, long-lived wines as well as the ancient wine culture of Lebanon, which had been moribund when his father, Gaston, founded Musar in 1930.
Musar’s success helped build the modern Lebanese wine industry. When the civil war ended in 1990, just five wineries were operating in Lebanon. By 2014 there were almost 50, Mr. Hochar said in an interview last spring.