Our company
Lebanese Fine Wines is a trading division of LPEK Limited, registered in England and Wales with the company number 2809163.
Our story
We are a Lebanese British couple who relocated to the UK in 2007 from Sierra Leone, West Africa to start our own business exclusively importing Lebanese wine into the UK.
The combination of business backgrounds, a passion for Lebanese wines and the desire to see us working to connect our home countries in some way, drove us to seek out small independent family owned vineyards in Lebanon producing quality wine which had not yet been exposed to the UK market.
We were quickly introduced to Clos de Cana and Domaine des Tourelles. We both fell in love with these vineyards immediately not only because of the beautiful wines we sampled but because of the warmth of the families that owned them.
On our return to the UK, it didn’t take us long to receive rave reviews from a focus group of tasters who enjoyed the samples we brought back with us. Since we began our small business we have been introducing our range of wines to the UK market, placing them in environments reflective of their quality and elegance.
Lebanese Fine Wines exists to share the quality and uniqueness of Lebanese wine. We want to introduce you to the wonderful flavours which have been lovingly nurtured in small, family owned vineyards that have survived both the test of time and challenges of a changing world.
We hope you will try our wines as we are sure that you will enjoy them. We believe that these quality wines reflect the true essence of Lebanese style, character and tradition.
History of wine in Lebanon
‘Lebanese wines…never heard of any…wait a minute, Chateau Musar, isn’t that Lebanese?’
This is how most conversations about Lebanese wine seem to start. However, whilst in modern times, Chateau Musar is credited with making a name for Lebanese wine across the world, the roots of wine making in Lebanon run a lot further into the depths of history.
Whilst some historians claim that wine could have been made in Lebanon from as early as 8000BC, what is known with some certainty is that the origins of winemaking began around 7000BC in a rough triangle of land encompassing the Caucasus in the north, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in the East and southern Palestine in the West.
It is generally accepted that it was the Phoenicians whose power bases were in the ancient cities of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre began making and exporting wine at least by 3000BC. It is also thought that wine was one of the most important commodities that was traded by the Phoenicians when they had commercial dominance between 900 and 330BC. For example, the oldest ships ever to be found in the deep sea were travelling from Phoenicia (now Lebanon) to Egypt or Carthage in 750BC were laden with wine storied in ceramic amphorae.
The first fine wines to be introduced into the Mediterranean were credited to the city of Byblos, said to be the oldest inhabited city in history.
However, despite these early inroads into wine making, Lebanon’s national drink is Arak. Made from a grape basis and flavoured with aniseed, Arak was traditionally drunk at every meal. The commercial Arak industry began in Zahleh and Qab Elias (in the Bekaa Valley) in the 19th Century when local priests taught villagers how to make wine and distil it into Arak. In recent years, whisky has replaced Arak as the popular drink amongst the younger generations, but Arak still remains popular.
One of the earliest wine makers in Lebanon was the church. Priests and monks produced sweet red wine for personal consumption as well as for Services. The sweet wine making process has changed little over the centuries. It was only in later years, with the increase in tourists visiting Lebanon that the monasteries started the cottage industry of wine making.
Ksara was the first monastery to organise its wine making. The Jesuit’s arrived in Lebanon in the 1640s and in 1857 the monks based in Ksara inherited and began farming a 25 hectare plot of land. It is unclear why these monks decided to organise their wine making but they applied their knowledge of agriculture and sciences as well as bought vines from Algeria (France’s colonial hub) and appointed a trained viticulturalist all to produce Lebanon’s first dry red wine. In so doing, the Jesuits of Ksara laid the foundations of Lebanon’s modern wine making industry.
The commercial wine making industry was given a boost in 1868, when a French engineer, Francois-Eugiene Brun, sent to Lebanon to help build the Beirut-Damascus highway, established Domaine des Tourelles. From his new vineyard, he produced wine which he sold predominantly to other French workers.
Whilst the Lebanese were not traditionally wine drinkers, it was clear to see that the French love of wine was adopted, in part, by the Lebanese. The conclusion of the Second World War in 1945 saw the departure of the French from Lebanon but what they left behind was the taste for wine. Lebanon’s wine industry experienced its most lucrative commercial period from 1946 but this golden age was brought rapidly to a halt in 1975 with the start of a bloody civil war which was to last for 15 years.
Since the end of the civil war in 1990, Lebanon’s wine industry has re-established itself as a player in the global wine market. Whilst Chateau Musar is the most famous vineyard in Lebanon, across the UK and arguably across the world, today, Lebanon has many other commercial vineyards with many producing award wining wines.
Reference: All the information above was taken from ‘Wines of Lebanon’ by Michael Karam, Published by SAQI in 2005
Map taken from: Lonely Planet