by Courtney Schiessl – In an industry beset by trends, Château Musar, an 87-year-old Lebanese wine producer, has garnered a cult following. It’s the only Middle Eastern wine offered by Thomas Keller’s legendary French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California, and it displays prominently at New York City’s Rouge Tomate. Manhattan’s Terroir Tribeca has a dedicated section titled, “All Hail the Almighty Château Musar.” When winemaker Serge Hochar died unexpectedly in December 2014, he was mourned in almost every major wine publication. How did Château Musar become the sole Middle Eastern producer to earn a spot on the international stage of wine icons?

The Beirut-based Château Musar, founded in 1930 by Gaston Hochar, initially burst onto the international scene in 1979, when it dazzled attendees of the Bristol Wine Fair under the helm of Gaston’s son, Serge. A British favorite thereafter, it didn’t gain acclaim in the U.S. until around 2000, when sommeliers and wine lovers alike began clamoring for the non-interventionist, natural bottles of red, white, and rosé Château Musar. While the key to Château Musar’s success is by no means singular, a simple reality set it up for success: It was available and actively marketed outside of Lebanon.

“The family’s foresight to sell the wines internationally and Serge’s very eloquent championing of them certainly has a lot to do with [the winery’s popularity],” says Christy Frank, wine buyer of Copake Wine Works in Copake, New York. For Musar’s first 40 years, the wine was largely consumed in its home country, but the 1972 onset of civil war almost eliminated that market. Serge, who continued to produce wine throughout the 20-year war, made a strong push for Château Musar in international markets.

But something caused wine professionals to fall head over heels for what was inside the Musar bottles and, counterintuitively, it was exactly what could have caused sommeliers to turn their heads in disgust: the unique, funky, savory, volatile, complex character of the wine.

“When you stuck your schnozz in a glass of Musar, there was no other wine on the planet Earth that tasted like it,” notes Paul Grieco, proprietor of Terroir Tribeca and Terroir on the Porch in New York. These were no ordinary wines. They were unusual and animalistic, dominated by non-fruit and earth, and until recent years, the “flawed” compounds of volatile acidity and brettanomyces. While many would call them pleasurable, few would call them approachable.

by Salah Takieddine BEIRUT,  (Xinhua) — Lebanese businessmen who have participated in the China-Arab States Expo in the northwestern Chinese city of Yinchuan expressed hopes that this event could produce positive results for the Lebanese economy. “The participation in the expo was very important for us and hope that we would have an important cooperation […]

by AP – Lebanese film director Ziad Doueiri, who was detained briefly for previous visits to Israel, lashed back against critics who accused him of normalisation with the Jewish state. He said on Monday that his work is for the good of Lebanon and the Palestinian cause. It was not clear why the Paris-based Doueiri, director of the award-winning civil war film “West Beirut,” was detained Sunday night, as he has visited Lebanon several times since traveling to Israel. Lebanon and Israel are in a state of war and Beirut bans its citizens from visiting Israel or having business dealings with Israelis.

Doueiri told reporters after three hours of questioning at a military court in Beirut Monday that authorities found that he has “no criminal intentions against the Palestinian cause.” Doueiri’s latest film, “The Insult,” opens in Lebanon this week, after winning the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Doueiri said that Kamel El Basha, the Palestinian awarded best actor at the Venice Film Festival, spent two years in Israeli jails. He said some journalists are trying to undermine him ahead of the film showing in Beirut, which begins on Thursday. Doueiri’s previous film, “The Attack,” was banned in Lebanon and most Arab countries. The movie is about a Palestinian surgeon living in Tel Aviv who discovers that a suicide attack in the city that killed 17 people was carried out by his wife. The movie was filmed in Israel and featured several Israeli actors.

Lebanese journalist Pierre Abi Saab, who is opposed to any dealings with Israel, wrote a column in the daily Al-Akhbar last week titled “Ziad Doeiri, apologize for your Israeli slip.” He said that Doueiri spent months in Israel to film “The Attack,” spending money there and speaking to Israeli media defending his movie amid criticism in Lebanon. “Today, Ziad Doueiri is coming on a white horse from Venice with a new movie expecting us to carry him on our shoulders and welcome him as a conqueror,” Abi Saab wrote. “We will not accept that the crime be covered,” he wrote, referring to Doueiri’s visits to Israel. Speaking to reporters outside the military court, Doueiri said he was well treated by Lebanese security agencies during his brief detention but blasted journalists he refused to name “that are fabricating things to block the new movie.” He said they used “dirty words against some people and accused them of being Zionists.” “My mother breastfed me Palestinian milk and the Palestinian cause. Members of my family were killed while fighting with the Palestinians,” Doueiri said.

By middleeastmonitor.com Lebanon will file a complaint to the United Nations against Israel for violating the country’s airspace and causing damage by breaking the sound barrier in the south of the country, its foreign minister said today. Israeli jets flew low over the southern city of Saida yesterday, causing sonic booms that broke windows and […]

By middleeastmonitor.com Lebanon will file a complaint to the United Nations against Israel for violating the country’s airspace and causing damage by breaking the sound barrier in the south of the country, its foreign minister said today. Israeli jets flew low over the southern city of Saida yesterday, causing sonic booms that broke windows and […]

BEIRUT, Lebanon — “Falafel Sahyoun” reads the awning of one storefront. “Falafel Sahyoun” reads the awning of the other. They’re right next to each other. Only a wall separates the two. And little sets them apart. Both have bright tube lights, mirrors on the walls, falafel balls bubbling in oil. And on both counters sit […]

  by Associated Press – Lebanon has held a state funeral for 10 of its soldiers captured and killed by the Islamic State group. President Michel Aoun presided over Friday’s ceremony in honor of the soldiers held at the Defense Ministry near Beirut. The bodies of the soldiers were recovered late last month following an […]

by Stephen Applebaum- the national,ae

Words can hurt and words can heal. In the Leb­a­nese ­film­maker Ziad Doueiri’s thrill­ing new court­room dra­ma, The ­In­sult, they do both. The film grew out of a real in­ci­dent three years ago in­volv­ing Doueiri, what he calls his “hurt­ful mouth”. It digs into the sect­ar­ian re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal fault lines that still exist in Leb­a­non, al­most 30 years af­ter the end of the coun­try’s bloody civ­il war. Talk­ing last week dur­ing the Ven­ice Film Fes­ti­val, where The In­sult is com­pet­ing for the Gold­en Lion, Doueiri re­calls wat­ering plants on a bal­cony in Bei­rut when some­one swore at him from the street be­low. “I leaned over the bal­cony and said, ‘Why are you in­sulting me?’ and he said, ‘Be­cause your wa­ter’s fall­ing on me.’ I no­ticed from his ac­cent that he was Pal­es­tin­ian and I said what you should nev­er say to a Pal­es­tin­ian … I wanted to hurt him as much as pos­sible, and I suc­ceed­ed.”

Doueiri apolo­gised – “He couldn’t even look me in the eye. He was very, very hurt”. In the film, his words (unprintable here) are spat out by Toni (Adel Karam), a Leb­a­nese right-wing Chris­tian car mech­an­ic, to­wards Yas­ser (Ka­mel El Ba­sha), a Pal­es­tin­ian con­struc­tion work­er who fixed his il­le­gal wa­ter pipe, af­ter the Pal­es­tin­ian re­fuses to apo­lo­gise for in­sulting him. There fol­lows an escal­at­ing ar­gu­ment that be­gins ver­bal­ly, then turns phys­ic­al­ly vi­o­lent and ends up in court as a case that grips the pub­lic, ex­plo­sive­ly split­ting opin­ion along lines that ­ex­pose the sim­mering ten­sions in Leb­a­nese so­ci­ety. “In the Mid­dle East, you know how we are,” says Doueiri. “We are like a pow­der-keg, waiting for a small spark.” The film­maker and his co-writ­er, Joelle Touma, were go­ing through a di­vorce while writ­ing the film, which no doubt helped give a sharp­ness and en­ergy to the con­fron­ta­tions be­tween the characters Toni and Yas­ser, and be­tween their re­spect­ive law­yers. The In­sult doesn’t take sides, though, and like their pre­vi­ous film, The At­tack, a­bout the fall-out from a sui­cide bombing in Tel Aviv, it shows great em­pathy by ac­knowl­edg­ing the hurt and trau­ma that un­der­lie its an­tag­o­nists. This is im­pres­sive giv­en Doueiri’s back­ground.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran confirmed on Sunday that an appeals court had upheld 10-year jail terms against a U.S. citizen, two Iranian-Americans and a U.S. resident from Lebanon who had been convicted on spying charges. In July, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that Iran would face “new and serious consequences” unless all “unjustly detained” American […]