Need I even introduce Château Musar at this point? Outside of this iconic Lebanese label, there’s hardly another producer in our Rolodex that receives the same level of unbridled furor and frenzied buying across the board. And I’m not just speaking about the SommSelect faithful—my colleagues and I are constantly jostling for our own bottles, too! This year alone we’ve rolled out Musar’s 2013, 2006, and 2001, yet our desire for them has not been quelled. If anything, these astonishing gems have made us hungrier for more. So, it is with great pleasure and a voracious appetite that we have the fortune to offer Musar’s epic 2000 bottling. Twenty years of flawless provenance and slow, nuanced evolution has resulted in a contemporary cult classic that cannot be matched. This decades-old showpiece delivers an essential, impossible-to-simulate experience for those looking to crack into the highest echelon of fine, mature red wine.
Lebanon’s Château Musar is one of the greatest—and a compelling argument could be made for the greatest—estates in modern history. Their soul-stirring and seemingly ageless library releases have dazzled sommeliers and collectors for decades on end, and the intrigue keeps surging with today’s library re-release from 2000. Of course, the world has become increasingly aware of the wizardry radiating within this historic Lebanese estate: No matter the country, you’ll find top Michelin-starred restaurants and collectors demanding/hoarding vintages dating back decades, and Musar’s expansive reserves have taken a major hit because of it. Put simply, finding these mature masterpieces becomes a harder task each day—yet they somehow still remain affordable to all. What other wine in the world can say that? I strongly urge you to take all 12—it’s the most savory, breathtakingly elegant, and Bordeaux-like bottling I've had from Musar in years.
Bordeaux is a useful comparison in that Château Musar’s founder, Gaston Hochar, was of French descent and studied winemaking in Bordeaux. His son, Serge, who died at age 75 in 2014, also studied in Bordeaux, under famed enologist Émile Peynaud. And yes, Musar utilizes a healthy dose of Cabernet Sauvignon to create their ethereal, long-lived reds. But again, Château Musar is really unlike anything else. Grown in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, near its eastern border with Syria, and vinified just outside Beirut, Musar wines aren’t just a good story—what’s in the bottle is for real.
Of course, there was Lebanese wine during ancient times, but viticulture had been all but abandoned when Gaston Hochar established Musar in 1930. His first good customers were French soldiers (France occupied Lebanon at that time), but the wines didn’t really catch on internationally until the late 1970s, when they were “discovered” at a wine fair in the United Kingdom. At this point, it was Gaston’s son, Serge, making the wine. Having spent well over 18 years perfecting their flagship red, the worldwide acclaim that Serge had worked for came with a bittersweet taste: Lebanon was embroiled in a decades-long civil war. Somehow, the Hochars continued to produce wine throughout the gut-wrenching conflict, literally trucking their grapes through war zones and, occasionally, using their cellar as a bomb shelter. That’s what prompted Decanter to award Serge their inaugural “Man of the Year” title in 1984 and, much later on, a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from a German publication.
Serge Hochar, who originally took over the winemaking in 1959, was widely known and loved in the wine community for his charm and his philosophical bent—given what he went through to make wine, he was entitled to his cryptic pronouncements. He was a ‘natural’ winemaker before that was a thing (organic vine work; native yeast fermentations; minimal use of sulfur), and he was also inclined to hold wines in his cellar for many years before releasing them. As he once quipped to the British wine writer Andrew Jefford: “The value of our stock is ten times our annual sales.”
This 2000 is a roughly equal blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignan, and Cinsault that is grown in gravelly soils at high elevations. These elevations temper the otherwise arid Mediterranean climate of the Bekaa Valley. Additionally, some of the vines here date back to the 1930s and yields are EXTREMELY low. In the winery, the grapes underwent a months-long, variety-separate natural fermentation in concrete vessels before being transferred into French oak barrels for one year. The individual varietal wines were then blended together and sent into cement tanks yet again before being bottled, unfined and unfiltered. After four more years of undisturbed bottle aging, the wine was released to the public in 2007—but not today’s batch: the bottles in our possession endured another dozen years of cellar aging before exiting Musar’s cellar! Obviously, it’s a classic, if not extreme, example of Hochar’s willingness to effectively age the wine before selling it to you.
All this expert blending and aging created a magnificent red in the year 2000 with the ultimate marriage of subtle power, complexity, and grace—“a serious wine with serious ageing potential,” says Château Musar. And while this may be the most finessed, savory, and Bordeaux-like of the last few Musar bottlings I’ve tasted, one thing is always similar across the board: the wines are shockingly affordable and one smell/taste instantly takes you to the triple-digit price range. For this particular library release, I decanted the wine for 60 minutes prior to serving in large Bordeaux stems around 60 degrees. Here are my original unedited notes: “cacao nibs, macerated black cherry, sous bois, cedar, damp herbs, dried black raspberry, stewed plum, fig, old leather, dried rose petal, pipe tobacco. Soft tannin, supple layers. Acidity keeps everything pronounced and lively. Rich textures, long and savory finish. What an absolutely gorgeous wine.” This thought-provoking beauty is far from fading, and will keep for another 5-10 years should you want to continue tracking its evolution. Enjoy.
