By
I’ve visited the Lebanon three times in
the last quarter century. The first occasion, in 1993, followed the
end of the 1975-1990 civil war, when Beirut was still in ruins and the
old Mercedes cars picked their way gingerly around the rubble. By 2003,
in times of uneasy peace, the SUVs had moved in; Beirut’s enduring zest
for both business and pleasure was again evident (the country consumed
three million bottles of wine in that year, almost half of it
imported). My latest visit, a couple of weeks ago, concluded with
hornet-like Ferraris noisily out-darting each other in the small hours
of a Saturday morning as they zipped past the serenely restored
Phoenicia hotel and the gleaming new office blocks nearby.
One of the
handicaps faced by Lebanese wine producers is that the country no
longer possesses the variety of indigenous varieties which, we must
assume, made its wines so notable in Biblical times (see Hosea 14:7,
written in the eighth century BC)
Not that the Lebanon’s problems are over. Syria’s savage and
intricate civil war is being fought less than 70 km from the Bekaa, and
this small country (half the size of Wales) is tolerantly hosting well
over a million Syrian refugees, swelling its own population by a fifth.
The country’s infrastructure is tottering — the small hours are the
only time a Ferrari is likely to return undented to its garage – and the
Syrian influx threatens Lebanon’s ever-delicate ethnic balance. “It
seems there is a no-fight, no-change policy in Lebanon at present which
everyone accepts,” says Etienne Debbané, part-owner of the Iksir winery
with Carlos Ghosn of Renault-Nissan and Hady Kahalé; Hubert de Boüard is
consultant. “All the parties are benefitting from this, but the day
one party no longer benefits, there will be problems.” With the recent
election of the intransigent former general Michel Aoun to the
Presidency, Lebanon has shown that it is not immune to the populist
tide.
Throughout these years of trouble, Lebanon’s wine creators have
quietly got on with planting, growing, harvesting and vinifying. The struggles of the late Serge Hochar were well-known,
but as Lebanese wine authority Michael Karam points out, “Serge Hochar
was the proof that communication works. Many others in Lebanon had his
experiences and his suffering too, but he was the one who communicated
it, whereas they didn’t”. Those who worked for Château Ksara (the giant
of the Lebanese scene), Château Kefraya and others have hair-whitening
stories to share, too. All you have to do is ask.
The struggles have not been wasted. My view is that the
high-altitude Bekaa Valley is a great terroir (if mysteriously so),
capable of producing magnificent red wines; I’ll be writing more about
these, and it, in a forthcoming blog. What, though, of Lebanon’s
whites?
One of the handicaps faced by Lebanese wine producers is that the
country no longer possesses the variety of indigenous varieties which,
we must assume, made its wines so notable in Biblical times (see Hosea
14:7, written in the eighth century BC). “The main reason is that we
were occupied by the Ottomans for 500 years,” says Ch Ksara’s Elie
Maamari. “A delegation came here from Montpellier in 2001 and spent 40
days looking for indigenous wine varieties, but they didn’t find
anything new.” Perhaps recent conflicts have taken their toll, too. A
retired viticulturalist called Jean Hage Chahine, based in the
winegrowing town of Zahleh in the Bekaa, told Michael Karam (for his
2005 book Wines of Lebanon) that he had surveyed 22 indigenous
wine-growing varieties in Lebanon in the 1950s. By 2005, though,
Chahine could only find six.
As it happens, the two principal indigenous varieties which are still
used in Lebanon are white: Obaideh (also spelled Obeidy and Obeïdeh)
and Merweh (or Merwah). Serge Hochar used to allege that these
varieties were ancestors of France’s Chardonnay and Sémillon
respectively, with the Crusader paths a route of transmission, and the Wine Grapes
book tentatively lists them as synonyms of these varieties. Recent DNA
evidence for Obaideh commissioned from José Vouillamoz by Joe Touma of
Château St-Thomas, however, has disproved this conclusively. Obaideh,
according to Vouillamoz, “has a unique DNA profile that didn’t match any
officially registered variety, or any other obscure non-registered
variety.” It’s used at present for both winemaking and arak production,
and doubles as a table-grape, too. (Merweh, a variety principally
grown not in the Bekaa but on the Mediterranean side of Mount Lebanon,
has not yet been analysed; I didn’t encounter any Merweh wines during my
recent visit.)
Michael Karam has been urging Lebanon’s winemakers to make more
single-variety Obaideh whites and Cinsault reds to give the country a
pair of signature styles. I’m not wholly convinced by the choice of
Cinsault (can it ever make a ‘serious’ red, even here?), but Karam is
absolutely right to push Obaideh.
Lebanon’s white wines are, in general, less convincing than its reds:
they can often be weighty and obvious in style, with a faintly gluey
character (rather like some whites from that other high-altitude
winegrowing plateau, Mendoza in Argentina). Viognier and Sauvignon
Blanc are both widely planted, but neither seems very happy in the
Levant to me; there are good Chardonnays from Lebanon, though few
(tasting notes for exceptions are given below). Many Lebanese whites
are blends of different varieties, often given an aromatic lift from
Muscat: a help, but not salvation. All of these varieties save Muscat
race to ripeness, and are August-harvested save at the highest
altitudes.
Obaideh, by contrast, can sit out the full season until harvest in
late September or even October, and still provide shapely, balanced wine
with modest alcohol levels (though these matter less than the
full-season ripening). It is not a markedly demonstrative variety, but
at best it is subtle and refined, with enough weight and heft to provide
satisfactory mealtime drinking, and with an aromatic finesse all of its
own. Its indigenous status means that the vines themselves tend to be
older than for Lebanon’s white international varieties. There are
drawbacks, though: it’s a fussy vine which needs care, so farmers aren’t
always keen on tending it; and its heartland in the Bekaa is around
Baalbek, nowadays a Hezbollah stronghold. As ever in the Lebanon, the
challenges faced by wine producers are exceptional. Joe Touma of Ch
St-Thomas is a determined supporter of the variety he spells Obeidy, but
harvesting of his key vineyard was held up for ten days in 2014 — as
the Lebanese Army battled Isis.
Tasting Lebanon’s white wines
Obaideh
Ch St-Thomas, Obaidy 2015
Aromatically, this unoaked, gold-white wine is fresh, clean and
agreeably understated, with just a whisper of spice to it. On the
palate, it has some of the plump fleshiness typical of Bekaa wines
without being corpulent, a sense of incipient structure, soft acidity,
more faintly earthy spice and a cleansing subtle bitterness to finish.
Drinkable and gastronomic. 90
Domaine Wardy, Obeïdeh 2013
This pale gold white is also aromatically muted but intriguing: shy
summer fruits and earth after rain. In the mouth, it is concentrated,
shapely and elegant, with more yellow summer fruit and a little orange,
too. It has a soft balance and a vinous finish: classy and delicious. 91
Chardonnay
Domaine Wardy, Perle du Château 2012
This wine had the subtlest Chardonnay aromas I encountered on the
visit, with elegant, restrained flavours. There always seems to be a
slight sucrosity to Lebanese Chardonnay, though. 89
Ch Ksara, Chardonnay 2006
Ksara’s Chardonnay comes from a single vineyard grown at 1,460
metres. The 2006 vintage is now gold in colour with succulent, rich,
nutty aromas and flavours. The advantage of the altitude is that the
wine is relatively petite in dimensions; the fruit character is sweet
and toothsome. 88
White Blends
Ch St-Thomas, Les Gourmets 2015
Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Viognier and Obaidy combine in this
lively, fresh white with green-apple scents and perfumed, musky palate
with some earthy spice. 88
Domaine Wardy, Clos Blanc 2015
This is a blend of 45 per cent Obeïdeh with the balance made up of
Chardonnay, Viognier, Muscat and Sauvignon Blanc. There’s some
attractive aromatic lift from the Muscat and Viognier, while the Obeïdeh
and the Chardonnay carry the middle palate towards an opulent but
aromatically freshened finish. Great purity and precision here. 91
Iksir, Grand Réserve 2014
This barrel-fermented blend of Viognier and Chardonnay has a faint
crème brûlée note on the nose. On the palate, it is deep, soft-textured
and fine-grained, though the interest perhaps comes more from the
evident care with which it has been crafted than from the intrinsic
merits of its fruit. 89
Ch Kefraya, Comtesse de M 2013
Another barrel-fermented blend of Chardonnay (60 per cent) and
Viognier with just a pinch of Vermentino, this has soft, creamy scents
and a mild, apricot-like richness of flavour with plenty of lees
nourishment. Very good wine, though not for the oak-shy. 91
… and a Rosé to finish
Ch Kefraya, Rosé 2015
Lebanon has got the rosé bug just like everywhere else – and 67 per
cent of all the rosé sold in Lebanon is just one brand, Ch Ksara’s
generously rounded Rosé Sunset. The best Lebanese rosé of those I
recently sampled is that crafted (principally from Cinsualt) by
Kefraya’s Fabrice Guiberteau: pale and understated, with some of the
discretion and soft drinkability that makes Provence rosés so
successful. 88
Read more at http://www.decanter.com/wine-news/opinion/jefford-on-monday/lebanese-wines-tasting-346159/#Wg1OGLIvIBAAUTT6.99
