Top 100 red wines of Lebanon - Page 2
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: Cabernet franc
Cabernet Franc is one of the oldest red grape varieties in Bordeaux. The Libourne region is its terroir where it develops best. The terroirs of Saint-Emilion and Fronsac allow it to mature and develop its best range of aromas. It is also the majority in many blends. The very famous Château Cheval Blanc, for example, uses 60% Cabernet Franc. The wines produced with Cabernet Franc are medium in colour with fine tannins and subtle aromas of small red fruits and spices. When blended with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, it brings complexity and a bouquet of aromas to the wine. It produces fruity wines that can be drunk quite quickly, but whose great vintages can be kept for a long time. It is an earlier grape variety than Cabernet Sauvignon, which means that it is planted as far north as the Loire Valley. In Anjou, it is also used to make sweet rosé wines. Cabernet Franc is now used in some twenty countries in Europe and throughout the world.
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, veal or pork such as recipes of vegetable noddles, pork tenderloin with onions or delicious marinated pork chops.
News from the vineyard of Lebanon
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 ...
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 ...
Alsace’s Domaine Zind-Humbrecht: 2019 releases tasted
It is always reassuring to find flourishing examples of family continuity in French wine estates. At the famous Domaine Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace, Pierre-Emile Humbrecht is the latest to join the family business. In preparation, he studied at the Changins School of Viticulture and Enology in Switzerland and then completed internships at wine estates, beginning with Thérèse Chappaz in that same country for 18 months, followed by a six-month period at Domaine Tissot in the Jura and then nearly eigh ...