It has been a long time friends. I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, but I thought I would kick off my latest adventure with a wine write up. A couple of days ago I went into my dad’s wine cellar and he suggested I pick up a bottle of Chateau Musar. He had three bottles kicking down there from 1999. We’ve had them down there for about a year, it was 14 % alcohol and my father deemed the first one ready to drink. We opened the bottle, it had a vibrant cherry to red brick colour. There was manure, horse, and straw on the nose. The kind of horse smell you get after you remove the saddle. There was definitely a leather component. As I swirled the wine in my glass to aerate the wine a little more I realized its nice legs. As I took the first sip I realized there was a heavy mouth feel, it had the weight of olive oil, it coated your mouth with its beautiful flavours. For being ten years old now, the tannins were still strong. That makes me think that it could still stand for another five plus years of aging. Now that we have 2 more bottles we can definitely try that out. We decanted this wine for about an hour before we served it, but because of how intense this wine is, it could probably withstand 3 hours of decanting to open it up. It is always the case that the last sip is the most amazing, but after realizing that, next time, I am going to decant it for 3 hours. There were beautiful flavours of black pepper, black fruit, and a healthy amount of acidity to make this wine so well balanced. The most intriguing part about this wine was when I read where it was from. I read the label but not well enough obviously. It is from Lebanon! LEBANON? I could have sworn it was a Bordeaux. After trying this, I was convinced it was Bordeaux and I am sure it could easily fool any collector. They’re making a great wine. I recommend everyone to try this, it is off the hook. The best part is that it is coming from an interesting part of the world. Not that I think it is weird that they’re making it in Lebanon because they’ve been making wine there for thousands of years. I am shocked because of how good this wine actually is. I am definitely going to be buying more wine from Lebanon or any Middle Eastern country. Explore, get out of your comfort zone and buy this wine. If you like robust, big bordeaux’s with the complexity of “the farm” you will enjoy this. I bid you good drinking!
Here is their link: http://www.chateaumusar.com.lb/english/home.aspx
Let me know what you think.
1999 Chateau Musar
Hey, ok, I get it, I guess – but does this really work?