More Lebanese wine ...

On the 2nd evening in Beirut there was party sponsored by the seminar organization in a hip restaurant/bar (The Library) where we got some nice food, but unfortunately the wine wasn't too good and the entertainment was a bit too loud to allow easy talking.

We drank a Reserve de Couvent 2007 from Ksara Winery. Even though this wine won at least two silver medals this year I am afraid we drank it somewhat too young.

It anyhow contained too much acids and too little taninnes to really be enjoyed with the steak that was server for dinner.

Luckily the next day we had more luck as we went for dinner in The Exchange next to the hotel where we drank the delicious 2003 (sic!) Chateau Kefraya made by Kefraya winery. The acidity and tannins are in perfect balance with this wooded wine with a lot of alcohol (14.5%) that really came close to some not so cheap bordeaux wines that I drank a while ago.

This 2003 vintage was much better than the 2005 one we drank two days earlier. On the winelist they also posted a prestigious Le Comte de M by Kefraya which is the topwine, but as it was 3 times the price I did not select it.

Lebanese wine ...

For work I am currently in Beirut, Lebanon and of course we had to try the local food specialities with one of our hosts. Luckily for me this person had no problem with drinking alcohol (which is not evident in the Middle East) and thus asked whether we would like to try some of the Lebanese wines ... of course I could not resist.

He negotiated with the waiter about which bottle of wine (in arabic thus I didn't understand a word about what they were saying) and the ended up choosing a bottle of red Chateau Kefraya.

During dinner we also go some explanation about the geography of Lebanon (I did not know they had mountains upto 3700m high where you can even go skiing) and the famous Beqaa Valley.

After listening to all this (and enjoying the nice wine) I concluded that the climate of the valley, separated from the Mediterranean sea by some mountains and separated from the dessert by some other mountains make it somewhat comparable to Napa Valley in California)

The prohibition ended 76 years ago ...

According to this article the U.S. prohibition law was (finally) repealed after 13 years of hard times for the nascent US Wine industry.

Both articles mention interesting ways on how the wine industry did actually (partially) survive:

• legal production for personal use only (50 gallon per family per year, that is about 190l, which is about 250 bottles ... not sure we consume that much in a year)
• selling to church for use during ceremonies
• selling of bricks of concentrated grapes with a warning that should prevent people from accidentally making wine ... (cfr. article in Time Magazine)

I just love the ingenuity with which people always succeed in bypassing the law to make money ...

Côtes du Rhône Villages Chusclan Les Ribières red

Last week one of the colleagues asked me for a bottle of wine we tasted on the wine event on the Argentina and Chili at work as he was organizing a wine tasting for a few of his friends at home.

Unfortunately I was out of Trapiche's Broquel Malbec, but we settled for the other (affordable) winner of the evening, being Echeveria's Reserva Syrah/Carmenere.

What does all this have to do with this Côtes du Rhône Villages Chusclan Les Ribières of the title ? In fact I got that one in return for the Echeveria :-)

When I returned home that evening and showed the bottle there was no stopping us from trying it immediately. It was very good (but it required some food, in the form of some toast and tapenade that we always have in house) .

Some tasting notes:

Very nice deep colored, still looking quite young (purple-ish). The aroma was very special with the vanilla of the oak barrels very much present but at the same time some leather and some minerals were also fighting very hard to gain access to the nose.

With respect to taste there were still a whole lot of tannins (in fact a bit too much in the beginning), but thanks to the also strong acidity of the wine everything was in good balance.