Château Oumsiyat Merlot 2020
£13.75
The wine
A lovely style of Merlot with typical black plum flavours enhanced by chocolate and vanilla, smooth and fruit forward.
Merlot needs cooler sites than most Lebanese vineyards offer, since it ripens early and can turn soft and jammy in heat. The Mount Lebanon slopes give the altitude to slow it down. French varieties dominate Lebanese viticulture because the modern industry was largely shaped during the French Mandate of the 1920s and 30s.
The producer
Château Oumsiyat
View all Château Oumsiyat winesFour generations of the Bou Sleiman family have made wine in Lebanon. When Joseph Bou Sleiman took over Château Oumsiyat he built a modern winery in the village of Mtein and set about combining local tradition with contemporary technique.
The estate farms 78 hectares at over 1,000 metres in the Bekaa Valley, the high plateau between Mount Lebanon to the west and the Anti-Lebanon range to the east. That altitude is the whole reason viticulture works here: the days are hot and dry, but the nights fall away sharply, and the mountains shelter the valley from Mediterranean humidity. Rainfall is scarce and disease pressure minimal.
Lebanon has one of the longest continuous winemaking histories on earth. The Phoenicians traded wine across the Mediterranean from these shores three thousand years ago, and the Romans built a temple to Bacchus at Baalbek in the Bekaa that still stands. The estate works international varieties alongside the indigenous Merwah and Obeidy, two ancient Lebanese whites grown almost nowhere else.
