Top 100 red wines of Lebanon
Discover the top 100 best red wines of Lebanon as well as the best winemakers in the region. Explore the varietals of the red wines that are popular of Lebanon and the best vintages to taste in this region.
Discovering the wine region of Lebanon
Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country with an ancient wine culture that has experienced a renaissance in recent decades. In 2011, about six million bottles of Lebanese wine were produced from 2000 hectares (5000 acres) of Vineyards. Modern Lebanese viticulture has moved inland from the ancient Phoenician port cities to the fertile Bekaa Valley. There are also a handful of vineyards near Jezzine, a few kilometres from the Southern end of the Bekaa, just inland from Sidon.
The majority of Lebanese wine is exported to the UK, France and the US, where receptive consumers have encouraged healthy growth in Lebanon's modern wine industry. In 1998, there were less than 10 wineries in Lebanon; there are now more than 30. Red wines account for the bulk of production; they are generally made from the classic southern French Grape varieties: Carignan, Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. White wines may contain Ugni Blanc, Clairette and Chardonnay.
The modern wine industry dates back to the 19th century. As non-Muslims living in a Muslim state - which had been Part of the Ottoman Empire since the 1500s - Christians living in Lebanon enjoyed certain freedoms, including the right to produce wine for ceremonial purposes. It was on this basis that in 1857 a group of Jesuit priests founded a winery in Ksara, a small town in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon's best wine-growing area.
Château Ksara deserves its own chapter in the annals of Lebanese wine history.
Discover the grape variety: Arinarnoa
Arinarnoa noir is a grape variety that originated in France (Languedoc). It produces a variety of grape specially used for wine making. It is rare to find this grape to eat on our tables. This variety of grape is characterized by large bunches of grapes of medium size. Arinarnoa noir can be found in several vineyards: South-West, Cognac, Bordeaux, Languedoc & Roussillon, Provence & Corsica, Rhone Valley, Loire Valley, Savoie & Bugey, Beaujolais, Armagnac.
Food and wine pairing with a red wine of Lebanon
red wines from the region of Lebanon go well with generally quite well with dishes of beef, lamb or spicy food such as recipes of braised beef with guinness, lamb and coconut curry, african style or pakistani rice (biryani).
Organoleptic analysis of red wine of Lebanon
On the nose in the region of Lebanon often reveals types of flavors of butterscotch, menthol or orange peel and sometimes also flavors of tobacco leaf, dried herbs or black plum.
News from the vineyard of Lebanon
Andrew Jefford: ‘2021 has been the year of all the miseries’
How’s the weather been this year? Awful. ‘La nature m’écoeure’, one of my wine-growing friends posted on Facebook on 8 April, having been out to look at the frost-crippled shoots on his vines that morning: ‘Nature disgusts me’. It takes a lot to make a wine-grower feel that. He wasn’t alone. Jeremiads echo around the northern hemisphere as 2021 closes. It’s been the year of all the miseries. None suffered more horribly than the growers of Germany’s Ahr valley, where floodwaters caused by the fou ...
Liv-ex 2021 Power 100 shows rebalancing of the fine wine market
The latest edition of Liv-ex Power 100, which lists the most powerful fine wine brands, shows that the period between October 2020 and September 2021 experienced a rebalancing of the market, with a number of classic labels returning to prominence. Château Lafite Rothschild re-entered the top 10, moving from 11th to 2nd place, while fellow First Growths Mouton-Rothschild and Margaux have also risen, to 6th and 10th place respectively. Petrus also re-entered the top 10, now at 7th place after a ye ...
Port Ellen and Brora casks to be auctioned by Sotheby’s
Part of the auction house’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the sale runs until next Tuesday, 14 June, and also includes one-off collaborations with artist Ini Archibong and photographer Trey Ratcliff. The two refill American oak hogshead casks, supplied from Diageo’s Casks of Distinction VIP private cask purchase programme, both have pre-sale estimates of £700,000-1.2m. The Port Ellen cask was filled on 15 February 1979, has a current strength of 52.9% abv and is estimated to hold 102 bottles. T ...