The flavor of smoke in wine of Mount Lebanon
Discover the of Mount Lebanon wines revealing the of smoke flavor during the olphactive analysis (nose) and during the gustative analysis (mouth).
Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country with an ancient wine culture that has experienced a renaissance in the past few decades. In 2011, roughly six million bottles of Lebanese wine were produced from 2000 hectares (5000 acres) of Vineyards. Modern Lebanese viniculture has moved away from the ancient Phoenician port cities and inland to the fertile Bekaa Valley. There are also a handful of vineyards near Jezzine, a few miles beyond the Southern end of the Bekaa, just inland of Sidon.
The majority of Lebanese wine is exported to the UK, France and the US, where the receptive consumer bases have encouraged healthy growth in Lebanon's modern wine industry. In 1998, there were fewer than 10 wineries in Lebanon; now there are more than 30. Red wines account for most of the output; these are usually made from the classic wine grapes of southern France; Carignan, Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. White wines may feature Ugni Blanc, Clairette and Chardonnay.
The modern wine industry here can be traced back to the 19th Century. As non-Muslims living in a Muslim state – Part of the Ottoman Empire since the 1500s – Christians living in Lebanon were permitted certain freedoms, one of which was the right to make 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 finest wine Terroir.
Chateau Ksara warrants its own chapter in the annals of Lebanese wine history.
The spirit was filled into a single ex-Sherry cask at the Speyside distillery in 1940, shortly before The Second World War forced The Macallan to close for the first time in its history. Bottled at 41.6% abv, only 288 decanters are available worldwide, featuring eye-catching packaging: a mouth-blown glass decanter sitting on a bronze sculpture of three hands, created by Scottish artist Saskia Robinson. The hands represent the distillery workers of 1940 who made the whisky; former Macallan chairm ...
Christmas, famously, is not about religion any more. But as a Decanter reader, you’ll also know that it’s not about giving, family or food either. No, it’s about drink. The one time of year when we get to open the good stuff without anyone questioning what we’re doing. And of course, there’s no shortage of advice as to what form those bottles should take. Every year, hacks in newspapers, magazines and websites tell us how to make the big day go with a bang. But these don’t correspond with the re ...
Kimberly Nicholas PhD (@KA_Nicholas) is a sustainability scientist at Lund University, and author of Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World Our 2020 research found that how fast we succeed at stopping warming will determine how much of the wine-growing regions and their characteristic varieties we love will remain in our lifetimes. Changing to warmer-climate varieties can help limit losses, but there are limits to adaptation. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. ...