____________________________

IT’S A RAINY Thursday in New York in early June and Paul Grieco, one of the city’s most influential ‘somms’, is wearing a green T-shirt that says simply In Serge We Trust.

It is his homage to the late Serge Hochar, Château Musar’s winemaker who single-handedly put Lebanon, and the Middle East, on the wine map with his contentious, funky reds and trippy whites, and Grieco’s passion for Musar – where and how it is made and where its DNA stands in the story of wine – is based on a profound respect for Hochar’s philosophy.

“His wines are hyper-unique and come from this unbelievable, tension-filled place which you can feel,” Grieco enthuses. “With every smell, with every taste of his wine, there is something vitally different. There are few wines that are as alive as Musar.”

Musar will always be out there, bold and brave, revered and misunderstood in equal measure and, crucially, different from almost any wine on the planet. But Lebanon is no longer a one-trick pony and hasn’t been for at least a decade. It is arguably the quintessential boutique winemaking country. Its 9m-bottle production from a mere 50 wineries makes its neighbours – Israel, Cyprus and Turkey – look like bulk producers by comparison. It also has a glamour that decades of war have been unable to dislodge.

And there is a new narrative. Syria, where the only serious winery, Domaine Bargylus – current production roughly 50,000 bottles – is still functioning in the most impossible of circumstances. In the latest edition of The World Atlas of Wine, Jancis Robinson called its Bordeaux-Rhône inspired red “the finest wine produced in the eastern Mediterranean”. So there.

So what of the other 49 Lebanese producers? There is a new mood in Lebanon, one characterised by an almost seismic shift in the quality of the white wines. And, while ‘massive’ is still the best adjective to describe the reds, there is now a willingness to deliver, as Grieco might put it, a more terroir-driven style using red varieties that may have been around a long time, but which had been seen as lesser grapes.

Until a little under 10 years ago, Lebanese white wines by and large played second fiddle to the powerful sun-drenched reds. But foreign importers pushed for better quality and this, combined with greater experience of working with what were relatively new varieties – Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat, Semillon and even Chardonnay – and planting them at higher altitudes, led to change.

PREMIUM WHITES

All this has seen producers such as Ixsir, Château Kefraya, Domaine des Tourelles, Château Marsyas, Domaine de Baal and the Karam Winery following in the steps of Châteaux Ksara and Wardy, which, in the 90s, led the way in making premium whites. The upshot is that the whites are now arguably more diverse and complex than the reds Lebanon is famous for.

But arguably the most important and exciting development, not just to Lebanese whites but to brand Lebanon, is the belated recognition among wine-makers that the native Obeideh grape, for centuries the backbone of the arak-making industry, is not the peasant grape many once dismissed it as, but an old and profound grape that can do for Lebanon what the Assyrtiko has done for Greek wine.

Obeideh had been used to great effect, alongside another Lebanese grape, Merweh, in Château Musar’s oxidative and aged whites, but these are highly esoteric wines and only likely to enter the orbit of the most informed consumer. Château St Thomas and Domaine Wardy now make much more approachable Obeideh varietals, and use it in their other white wines, as do Ixsir, Domaine des Tourelles, Massaya, Château Barka and Nabise Mont Liban.

So what of the reds? For the past 25 years, the conventional wisdom among Lebanese producers, given the small production, has been to focus on quality, a philosophy translated into beautifully made and often equally beautifully packaged, powerful international style Bordeaux-Rhône blends, dressed in the most expensive oak money can buy and which will age forever.

Yet the varieties that arguably best reflect Lebanon’s formidable terroir are Carignan, Cinsault and Grenache, all three of which were introduced to Lebanon from Algeria by the Jesuits in the mid 19th century. While not indigenous, they are Lebanon’s adopted children and haven’t really been given the respect they deserve and are used mainly in the easy drinking entry-level wines, even if those wines are often of the highest quality.

Only Château Musar used Carignan and Cinsault as the “flesh and the perfume” in its famous Château wine. Massaya, with its close connection to the Brunier brothers of Vieux Télégraph, has also been happy to shout about its Cinsault, but among the other producers, one got the feeling it was treated like a bit of a yokel in the face of the relatively recent aristocratic arrivals such as Cabernet Sauvignon, which has become the workhorse of the sector.

Merlot has not really lived up to its star billing as a varietal but does well in blends, and Syrah has proved a revelation in the past 20 years and might explain the belated interest in its less-celebrated Rhône cousins.

The upshot is that later this year, Domaine des Tourelles, founded in 1868 by a French railroad engineer, is releasing its Vielle Vigne Cinsault, made from 60-year-old vines and the first Lebanese Cinsault varietal to appear on the international market.

Meanwhile, Château Kefraya has been experimenting with old vine Carignan and Cinsault. The winery has a proud tradition of blending and may eventually decide to put the two in the same bottle, but what is important is that Fabrice Guiberteau, Kefraya’s French winemaker, is convinced by the quality of the grapes, some of which are more than 40 years old, and recognises their potential.

You might argue that four wineries out of 50 does not a revolution make, but Lebanon is a small, close-knit country. The Obeideh experiment has lit a national touch paper. I predict Cinsault will do the same and create a new and exciting taste profile for Lebanon to complement the so-called Super-Lebs – full-on, international blends with undeniable global appeal and which punch above their weight in terms of price.

“You’re getting the same quality as wines that are double the price,” says Matt Wilkin MS, of H2Vin, which imports Château Marsyas and Domaine Bargylus into the UK. “When you think what it costs to make them and the circumstances in which they are made, these wines really offer a fantastic price to quality ratio.”

In the northern district of Batroun, another mini revival is taking place. Where 20 years ago there was nothing, there are now 10, mainly micro, wineries with cooler sea-facing vineyards. The Batroun producer with the most ambition is arguably Ixsir, an award-winning ‘green’ winery whose philosophy is to work with the best Lebanese terroir, not just in Batroun in the north, but across the country from Jezzine in the south. Working at altitude is key to the winery’s identity, planting vines as high as 1,800m – among the very highest in the northern hemisphere.

DIVERSITY ASSURED

While the Bekaa Valley is still the epicentre of Lebanese winemaking, there is the notion that it was an anomaly, an enclave in an otherwise ‘dry’ Arab country. Ixsir and the rest of the Batroun producers want to champion the district as Lebanon’s second wine region and, with other wineries in the south – Mount Lebanon and the Chouf – further diversity is assured.

In neighbouring Syria it’s a slightly different story. At Domaine Bargylus, founded in 2005 by Syrian-Lebanese brothers Sandro and Karim Saade, on the sea-facing slopes of Jabal Ansarieh above the port city of Latakia, making wine goes hand in hand with staying alive. In the same year, the brothers also established Château Marsyas in the Bekaa Valley. Of the two, it was considered the riskiest venture. No one could have predicted what would happen in Syria.

They retained the services of leading French consultant Stéphane Derenoncourt for both projects. He admits it is frustrating to make wine in Syria by remote control but he has no choice. “I look at photographs, send emails and receive grape samples by taxi. This is not how it is supposed to be done,” he told me in Beirut last year. “But this is our baby. We started from scratch and now we are working with exciting terroir that will one day be famous all over the world. I know these wines can age and I want to be able to taste the war vintage in 15 years.”

The Saades do indeed go to extraordinary lengths to get their wines from Syria to Europe. Before the war, the wines made the simple overland journey to the Lebanese capital of Beirut, but now they have to make an astonishingly complicated journey via the port of Latakia in northern Syria to Port Said in Egypt and then back to Beirut, before being shipped on to Belgium.

Winemaking in the Middle East has had to cope with war, occupation or instability for millennia. It’s part of the business model. “As long as it is humanly possible we will harvest our grapes and make wine to standards we have become known for,” says Karim Saade. “We will show the world that Syria and Lebanon are not just areas of conflict. We have a message of civilisation and generosity of spirit that we can share.”