Wine Making in Lebanon

It's harvest season in Lebanon, so on Monday I drove over the coastal mountain range and down to the Bekaa Valley, the fertile basin that is both home to Lebanon's wine industry and to a significant number of the country's Shia Muslims. It's a very Lebanese experience to watch Bedouin farm workers in the early morning light, mosques in the distance, carry grapes by the crate-load to be pressed into a liquid that they and most of the neighbors are forbidden by Islamic law to drink.

Though alcohol production might seem incongruous in the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East, vinticulture is an integral part of Lebanese culture, and not just because of the country's large Christian minority. Winemaking was first developed in the ancient Middle East, and such was the importance of wine making in the Bekaa during classical antiquity, that the Romans built a massive temple in Baalbek to the wine god Bacchus which still stands today. Arabs themselves invented the art of distilling fermented beverages into alcoholic spirits, exported it during the Islamic conquests of the Middle Ages, and practice it still by making arak, a grape based anise flavored drink. Today, the majority owners of Lebanon's two largest wineries are Druze and Sunni Muslims respectively. The workforce that picks the grapes, and the landowners who grow them are almost all Muslims. And perhaps God only knows how many of Lebanon's wine drinkers are also Muslims.

"The whole existence of wine making is a contradiction to most of the preconceived notions people have Lebanon, " said my host, Ramzi Ghosn, who along with his older brother Sami, owns Massaya, one of Lebanon's newer winemakers. The Ghosn brothers are part of the generation that left Lebanon during the country's brutal 15-year civil war, and who began returning in the 1990's to rebuild the country with skills they learned in exile. For Ramzi, who studied marketing in the United States, wine is a perfect vehicle for changing the perception that Lebanon is haven for religious fanaticism and terrorism. "Wine is a message of tolerance and sophistication."

Admittedly, Lebanon -- which makes about 6 million bottle of wine a year -- is one of the world's smallest producers. But a few of the country's dozen or so commercial producers make wines that are internationally renowned, and most of them make wine that is very easy on the way down. Over a traditional dinner of frogs legs, thick yogurt, and sauteed liver, Ramzi and I drank a Massaya classic red, not one of his fanciest, but one that best reflects the region, with a peppery taste and smells of mint and thyme. The humble cinsualt grape he uses doesn't have a strong personality of its own, but absorbs the surrounding environment like a sponge. Much like Lebanon itself.

---Andrew Lee Butters/Chtaura