We gathered at the Tanglin Club for a tasting of wines from Lebanese wine maker Chateau Musar.
Wines tasted – Blanc 2003, Reds – 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007
This tasting was organised in memory of Serge Hochar, the inaugural Decanter Man of the Year in 1984. Though he passed on in 2015, a vertical selection of his wines (including one white) was made available at a good price a few weeks ago by our friend Irene Ong of Epiphany Wines.
Chateau Musar was founded in 1930 by Gaston Hochar. His son Serge took over the wine-making in 1959, after studying oenology at the University of Bordeaux with Emile Peynaud. The civil war that tore Lebanon apart from 1975 to 1990 did not defeat Chateau Musar; Serge refused to abandon the wine, and lost only the 1976 and 1984 vintages to the war. Recognition from Michael Broadbent, at the 1979 Bristol Wine Fair, threw Musar into the international spotlight. We are however tasting post-civil war Musar, all made by Serge.
The red wine is grown in three villages on the western side of the the Bekaa valley, on the foothills of the extended Mount Lebanon. Musar’s own 50 ha of red grapes are in the village of Kefraya (on a variety of soils: sometimes stony, sometimes with more clay and sand, over a limestone base), while the vineyards it controls (but doesn’t own) are in the neighbouring villages of Aâna (deeper soils over limestone) and Ammiq (gravels over limestone). The vineyards are sited between 900m and 1050m above sea level. This geography gives it less rain and more sunshine. Musar’s white grapes, by contrast, are grown in two very different locations: one 10-ha vineyard in sited across the Bekaa valley on the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, in Ain Arab (at 1400m, on stony chalk soils), and the other 5-ha vineyard is sited on the seaward side of Mount Lebanon, in a village sited at 1500m above sea level called Baqaâta (on calcareous gravels).
The red is made from three grapes – Cinsault, Carignan and Cabernet Sauvignon. The vines are all over 50 years old and yields are less than 20 hl/ha. The grapes are hand-picked and trucked 70 km to the winery at Ghazir. Both fermentations take place in concrete with long macerations of up to five weeks and gentle extraction using some pigeage but principally remontage; after between 6 and 9 months the wines are transferred to oak casks (about one-third new) for between 10 and 14 months, after which the reds go back into concrete for another year, during which the final blend is assembled – quite an unusual process. They are then bottled, generally without filtration; the average production is around 25,000 cases.