Last month, as prime minister Fuad Seniora approved the extension of beetroot subsidies for a further three years with funding totalling $6,000 per hectare, Lebanon’s wine makers, who receive no such public sector support, were cheerfully wrapping up their harvest, too busy to ponder on the importance of beetroot. Their new wines will eventually appear on the shelves of Lebanon’s supermarkets, on the pages of restaurant wine lists and in pallets stacked in containers ready for export to willing quaffers in France, the UK, Germany, Canada, the US, Scandinavia and beyond.
And unlike the beetroot industry, the wine sector is expanding. This year Akram Kassatly, whose Kassatly Chtaura is a leading producer of soft drinks and who, several years ago developed the homemade alco-pop Buzz, is returning to his first love of wine making and producing the first bottles of Chateau Makse. Elsewhere, the Saadeh Group is reportedly planting grapes in the West Bekaa with a view to eventually producing its own wine. Both are multi-million dollar investment projects and reflect the current optimism in wine’s potential.
Another, relatively more modest venture, is Chateau Khoury, located in the hills above Zahleh. Raymond Khoury, like Chateau Kefraya’s Michel de Bustros and Cave Kouroum’s Rahal family, is a former grape supplier who has turned his hand to wine production. He has 13 hectares (130,000 m2) planted with a wide range of grape varieties (including frustratingly difficult but potentially thrilling Pinot Noir) and will release his first wines into the market next year.
When we meet, Khoury is entertaining the regional sales agent for Seguin Moreau, the manufacturer of arguably the best oak barrels in the world. The family has gathered for lunch in an outhouse on the estate. Nearby the Chateau, which Khoury will use as a home, tasting center and hotel, is still being built. “Don’t ask me how much I have spent,” he laughs. “The winery itself cost $1 million. Then you must add the land and the buildings… let’s say over $3 million in all.”
His son, Jean-Pierre, has just finished his winemaking studies in France and will be responsible for production, while his daughter XXX, who gained valuable experience working in wineries in South Africa and California will be responsible for marketing. Khoury hopes to produce 30,000 bottles but is confident that within the next decade he will eventually increase production to 100,000.
Even by Lebanon’s microscopic – by global standards – production levels, Khoury’s output is small, but he is not alone. There is an increasing number of “micro-wineries”, who no doubt inspired by the achievements of similar garagistes in California and elsewhere in the wine producing New World, want to make limited quantities – usually 20,000-50,000 bottles per year – of premium wines. In the ultimate boutique nation their aim is to produce the ultimate boutique wines (typically wines made from low, carefully selected grape yields, matured in brand new oak barrels with minimal filtration).
Too small to make it onto the nation’s notoriously crowded (not to mention expensive) supermarket shelves, these producers are taking a leaf out of the small Californian producers and selling direct to loyal consumers through often nothing more than word of mouth.
“More than half of our 265 members produce less than 10,000 cases per year. Many are small family producers with several thousand case production, making them small and their wines can be hard to acquire if they are popular,” explains Tori Wilder, Communications Director for the Napa Valley Vintners in California. “These small wineries often sell the majority of their wines directly to consumers, through mailing lists and wine clubs.”
It is a strategy that at least one small Lebanese producer is beginning to wake up to. In Bhamdoun, once famous for its grapes, but never a hub of wine production, Naji Boutros and his American wife Jill, owners of Chateau Belle-Vue, have just completed their fourth third major harvest. “We got just over 22 tons this year,” says Jill who is responsible for marketing.
Compared to the steel of the Khoury winery, Belle Vue, with its plastic fermentation tanks is still very basic, but that is how Boutros likes it. For those who care to listen, he is an advocate of starting small and building gradually. But small is a relative term. He is insistent that only grapes picked in the Bhamdoun area are used in his wines and to achieve this he has been gradually buying up pockets of suitable land and planting them with wine grapes. “Let’s just say that I have invested several million dollars so far,” says Boutros
None of Belle-Vue’s four wines have been released on the market; that comes next year. In the meantime, they have been donated a two cellars, one of which Jill is developing into a cozy tasting room. “We are setting up a mailing list because we want a wine community to whom we can sell directly,” she explains.
The Belle-Vue initiative is entrenched the philosophy of reviving Bhamdoun’s once-proud vitiicultural heritage and much of the drive for his wine making initiative stemmed from a desire to rebuild. When the former Merrill Lynch executive returned to Bhamdoun in the mid-90s, the pain he felt at viewing the devastation, inspired him to plant vines – particularly on the site of his grandfather’s hotel Belle-Vue – and make great wine. His dream may just be realized. His second tier wine, the aptly-named Renaissance, has been listed with nine other Lebanese wines in the latest edition of The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia.
On a similar trajectory – his flagship St John was listed in the award winning Wine Report – is Captain Habib Karam, a commercial airline pilot with Middle East Airlines (MEA). His day job gives him responsibility of hundreds of millions of dollars of aircraft and its passengers, but today, not far from Chateau Belle-Vue, on a rocky hillside in Ras el Harf, he has an altogether different challenge. A consignment of new, empty wine bottles destined for his modest Jezzine winery has slipped from their palette. The lorry driver and his assistant, stand around, scratching their heads as Karam wonders how is will transport 10,000 loose bottles. Such are the pitfalls of the small winery owner.
Karam’s initiative began about five years ago. Apart from a love of wine and a desire to produce small quantities of beautiful wines, he is a proud son of Jezzine and wants to encourage local farmers to plant wine grapes, a strategy that outside the Bekaa has met with mixed results. Karam says the locals have responded positively, planting both Merlot and Muscat but in Ras el Harf the scene of Karam’s fracassement de bouteilles, Clos de Qana owner Fadi Gerges admits that his initiative to convince local farmers to do the same, went off half-cocked. Boutros didn’t take the risk and bought his own. He has 12 hectares so far. He believes that this is the only way to achieve consistency and guarantee that his wines are always made from Bhamdouni grapes.
Karam has bought and harvested a total of 55 tons this year. His objective is straightforward. “I want to make low-cost expensive wine, reach a level of 60,000 bottles and maintain this production for the next ten years. Then we will see.” He admits he relishes the solidarity that wine making affords and that it is a useful antidote to his day job. “I am winemaker, accountant and administrator.” He is also passionate about Lebanon’s potential. “I have vinified in the US in France and in Lebanon. This is a paradise. We will soon have a real status in the wine world and we will sell our wines. I can’t see how we can fail when we make such small quantities. Out total production is the same as one French vineyard,”
Habib Karam, Naji Boutros and Raymond Khoury are not alone. Domaine des Tourelles, one of Lebanon’s oldest wineries and the maker of arak Le Brun, has upped its profile, hired a new winemaker and produced a premiere red, Marquis des Beys. Then there is the Nazih and May Metni, whose vineyard in Richmaya is the basis for Nabise Mont Liban, while in, near Batroun, retired General Joseph Bitar makes small quantities of Kfifane wine, for the American market. More will surely follow. The age of the small producer is upon us – and he is not farming beetroot.
