Wines of Lebanon - the journey continues

This is the foreword I wrote to a book by Michael Karam that has just been released.

My first real exposure to Lebanon, its wines and its winemakers was in 2010, at a smart Lebanese restaurant on London’s Jermyn Street. I’d been invited to have lunch with some Lebanese winemakers who were in town. I was trying to reinvent myself as a wine writer following a mediocre career in publishing. I didn’t know much about wine at the time, even less than I do now, but I was a fan of Chateau Musar, and I rarely give-up the chance to have a boozy lunch.

While we ate course after course of delicious food, the winemakers took it in turns to buttonhole me, pour me their most expensive wines and ask me what I thought as if my opinion really mattered. It was all a bit overwhelming, and I felt very young and out of my depth.

Then the arak came out and things loosened up. As much as I love wine, I don’t think a better social lubricant has been invented than arak. Michael Karam sat down next to me and asked me what I thought of the wines. It was partly his manner, like a confessor, you feel you can say anything to Michael, and partly the arak, but I was honest and said that I liked some of them but not the expensive richly-oaked cabernet blends that the winemakers seemed most proud of. They could have come from anywhere. Right answer! I had touched on his pet topic. We then tasted through the wines together and he asked me which ones I liked the best. I picked a few including one that sold at the time for only $4 in Beirut.

I wrote later on my blog:

“You can buy wines that taste distinctly Lebanese. They are heady, a little wild, with a cinnamon sweetness to them. They are exotic: one can almost picture the Phoenician merchant from the Asterix comics, Ekonomikrisis, pouring a cup from an amphora. The wines that have this magic are [Chateau] Musar itself; one of the more affordable wines from [Chateau] Kefraya and, more gloriously oriental of all, [Chateau] Heritage. And what do they all have in common? They contain a large dose of cinsault.”

I realise now that I had written what Michael had wanted me to write. He had steered me towards my conclusions so expertly that I thought I had come to them all by myself.

Michael knows more about Lebanese wine than anyone else, having written ‘Wines of Lebanon’ in 2005. Back then, his prose were ably backed-up, as in this and other books, by the stunningly evocative and sensitive images taken by his partner-in-crime, Norbert Schiller, a former news photojournalist who swapped the battlefield for the vineyard and whose wine pictures always capture the humanity and warmth of this mesmerising, but often frustrating, nation.

Michael Karam and I nearest to the camera in the cellars beneath Chateau Kefraya

But, born to a Lebanese father and Egyptian mother and brought up in London, Michael is simultaneously Lebanese and thoroughly English at the same time. This has given him an outsider’s perspective. The Lebanese wanted to make wines like those produced in Bordeaux, Tuscany or California, but Michael saw that while this might work for the Lebanese restaurant market, it was not necessarily how to capture the imagination of the world.

Lebanon’s treasures were in the original varieties planted by the Jesuits who founded Chateau Ksara: old vine cinsault, carignan and grenache, as well as its native white grapes, merwah and obeideh. Chateau Musar, the country’s greatest wine, is a blend of cinsault, cabernet sauvignon and carignan. It’s creator, the late Serge Hochar, may have captured the imagination of the world with his stories of winemaking during the 1975-90 civil war but without his wine’s spicy magic, his showmanship would have been pointless.

For a long time, many of Lebanon’s producers were exasperated by Michael’s insistence that cinsault (and indeed greater use of the two indigenous whites) was the way forward for Lebanon. How could it be when it doesn’t make great wines in France? The Lebanese are terrific Francophiles, the industry is Francophone, based on French varieties with French or French-trained winemakers. Cinsault was only good for cheap wines (top tip: often the best wine on the list in a Lebanese restaurant is the cheapest). It was hard enough getting all the Lebanese winemakers to see each other as allies rather than rivals, without getting them to change their wines. Yet Michael persisted.

For Michael and I, it was the start of an enduring friendship. We talked wine, families, journalism and politics over many, many long lunches. He has that rare thing these days of being able to disagree profoundly with you without falling out.

In 2016, I was able to fulfill a long held ambition of visiting Lebanon on a press trip led by Madeleine Waters who organised the award-winning ‘Wines of Lebanon’ generic campaign in the UK. It consisted of two nights in Beirut and two in the Bekaa valley. Every night we stayed up late drinking arak, smoking cigars and talking. It was an unsettled time: the war was waging in Syria just 20km from Chtaura where we were staying; Britain had voted to leave the European Union and while we were there, news came in that Donald Trump had won the US election. Lebanon itself, however, seemed peaceful enough, Beirut was buzzing, but Michael muttered darkly about corruption and the failure of the political class, something that would literally explode four years later.

But we were there for the wines. At every winery, we were offered cinsault straight out of the barrel ‘to please Monsieur Cinsault’. Without exception, they were superb: ripe, spicy, and exotic. So different to French cinsault. Most went into blends though Domaine Wardy bottled a little for the family. We tried amazing old wines from 1960 at Chateau Ksara, a grenache and cinsault blend made by the monks, and a 1976 pure cinsault from Domaine des Tourelles. Most exciting of all, Faouzi Issa at Tourelles, another great showman in the Lebanese tradition, had just released a commercial cinsault varietal, which took the London wine world by storm selling out from the Wine Society in a couple of days. Since then Chateau Ksara has released a varietal carignan, another much-maligned Jesuit variety, that does wonderful stuff in the Bekaa and a gorgeous pure merwah.

There’s a real excitement about the country’s wine internationally. No longer are all articles on the country’s wine titled ‘Beyond Musar’ or similar. And much of this has to be down to Michael. He not only showed how Lebanese wine can market itself but changed the way it tastes. How many writers can be said to be so influential?

When ‘Wines of Lebanon was first published in 2005, Lebanon was an optimistic place. The country was rebuilding itself after the civil war that raged from 1975 until 1990, investment was pouring in, Beirut was being rebuilt and once again it was an international tourist destination. Fast forward 20 years and things don’t look so rosy. There are deep problems and its future looks uncertain, but when you try the country’s wines in all their heady Levantine glory, meet its winemakers, or read this marvellous book and soak-up Norbert’s images, it’s impossible not to feel optimistic. Lebanon has overcome worse in its time and thrived. Inshallah it will do so again.

‘Wines of Lebanon’ by Michael Karam is available from Acadamie du Vin.