Description
Château Musar, Grand Vin
I know we have a savvy subscribership because each time we offer Château Musar’s iconic Grand Vin, it’s as if the world’s largest vacuum is turned on. The demand for this far-flung, battle-hardened Lebanese estate rivals that of Château Margaux, all while having an immensely longer cellar regimen, proportionate aging potential (30+ years), and a ridiculously undervalued price tag. While this isn’t one of their decades-old library releases, today’s 2014 arguably holds the most sentimental and profound value: It represents the last vintage Serge Hochar was involved in before his untimely passing.
Without Serge, Château Musar wouldn’t exist as it does today—but he wouldn’t want you to buy his final vintage in commemoration of his life. He would want you to buy it because (1) few producers around the world are willing to match Musar’s arduous, natural, seven-year journey in the cellar, and (2) it unquestionably exists as one of the great red wines of the world. Today’s 2014 possesses the greatest traits of Bordeaux and the Southern Rhône, all while remaining emphatically unique. It’s an exotic, lush, and powerful blend of equal parts Cabernet, Cinsault, and Carignan that so vividly illustrates why Musar has become an alluring cult label and collector’s item for the ages.
[NOTE: This special offering will be arriving at our warehouse on August 13th]
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. Upon Serge’s passing in 2014, his two sons, along with Serge’s brother Ronald (who was with him every step of the way) and his own son have been running the operations.
Serge 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.”
Today’s 2014 is their classic blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, and Carignan 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 all yields are EXTREMELY low. Because conditions were so hot and arid in 2014, harvest was carried out as meticulously as ever before: Musar had four separate teams combing their vines simultaneously! In the winery, the grapes underwent a long, varietal-separate, natural fermentation in concrete vessels for six months before being transferred into French oak barrels for one year. The individual varietal wines were then blended together in 2016 and sent into concrete yet again before an unfined and unfiltered bottling in July of 2017. It then stayed in their cellar, maturing quietly, for nearly four additional years. It’s a classic, if not extreme, example of Hochar’s willingness to effectively age the wine before selling it to you.
All this creates a red with the ultimate marriage of sublime power, complexity, and grace, but just like most Musar bottlings, you should decant this for at least two hours before serving in large Bordeaux stems. The wine spills out wild and lush aromas of red and black cherry liqueur, raspberry, juicy plums, redcurrant, licorice, garrigue, leather, crushed hot stone, cloves, tobacco, and fired clay. The medium-plus bodied palate is liquid luxury: each opulent layer is framed by soft, rounded tannins and as hours pass by (I recommend drinking over two days), new dimensions of flavor and texture emerge. You can absolutely drink one now but the 10-year mark is generally when Musar kicks into a new gear. Keep in mind, though, that this will last to 2040 and beyond, so open your bottles accordingly. Cheers!
