Lebanese harvest

Against all odds, wine company Chateau Musar harvested a vineyard before the ceasefire in Lebanon. Local villagers helped rescue one of Musar’s trial vineyards of Chardonnay, even though fighting between Hezbollah and Israel made picking grapes in the Bekaa Valley extremely dangerous. UK Director Jane Sowter told ThirtyFifty that, ‘The pickers we normally have obviously weren’t there, so we had mothers with their boys picking the grapes. Everyone mucked in and helped. It was fantastic.’ Post-ceasefire, women also helped to rescue the vintage at Lebanon’s oldest chateau, Chateau Ksara, last week. However, even with the grapes saved, there’s no guarantee of winemakers being able to get back to normal business. Jane Sowter explained that, ‘Things are still pretty difficult because of the blockades at the ports.’ This presents a problem not only to companies who need to get bottles out for export, but also for things like getting corks into the country.