Barrels of Potential

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