A Lebanese Wine with History
(Ext: "A Wine Worth Fighting For") About (Last Updated - 5/20/2023) Over the past few months, I've been learning a lot about wine. I took my WSET Level 1 and 2 courses along with some significnat quantities of "practical study" (i.e., drinking wine) and I feel like I've learned not just the fundamental knowledge of wine, but also how to express my feelings about the wine in concrete, standardized terms. I hope to put that into practice here. After taking WSET 2, I also discovered a new love for old wine. The combination of soft tannin, earth, mushroom, and a hint of spice is incredible to me, and I love spending hours drinking such a wine, attempting to distinguish all its subtleties. This 1998 Chateau Musar was recommended to me for that particular reason. Chateau Musar is a Lebanese winery located around 20 miles from Beirut, producing wine since 1930 in the style of Bordeaux. The 1998 vintage contains Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, and Carignan grapes. The winery has a unique history due to its location; I've linked above to an article called "A Wine Worth Fighting For", which does a much better job than I could at capturing this history. All I'll say is that this is one of the few times when I've been excited to drink a wine for days in advance simply because of the story around it. Chateau Musar's style of winemaking is particularly focused on natural processes. The wine is fermented using ambient yeasts and the resulting wine is not fined, resulting in a healthy amount of sediment in the bottle. The winery strongly recommends decanting the wine carefully and giving it plenty of time to open up. In my experience, tasting the wine immediately upon opening and then at regular intervals afterwards was a great way of "getting to know" the wine. On the Nose We decanted the wine for several hours and experienced its evolution over time. The most obvious indication of the wine's age was its color - a translucent garnet. At first, the wine expressed a nose of smoke and black pepper, but it was closed and reticent to express itself. Over time, the wine began to express notes reminicent of an Indian Tadka, showing notes of Bay Leaf, Mustard Seed, and Cumin. Fruity notes of black cherry, plum, and cranberry also appeared. After an hour or so, the wine had made its final transformation - notes of wood, leather, and tobacco took root. Subtle, underlying notes of herbs and mint persisted throughout. This was a very complex wine overall. On the Palate The palate was a little more straightforward than the nose. Flavors of black cherry, dried plum, and mushroom were dominant throughout the wine's decanting. Throughout the bottle, a strong acidity (almost reminiscent of acetone) persisted. After some reading, I discovered that this acidity is characteristic of the Chateau Musar style - some say it's due to the long distance between the vineyard and the winery.
