1998 Chateau Musar Bekaa Valley Red Blend

There may be no wine more deeply held in the hearts of sommeliers around the world than Chateau Musar. Founded in 1930, Musar is a story of perseverance: making wine every year of the Civil War except 1976 and 1984, despite the near constant threat of bombings. In Chicago in 2012, I visited with Serge Hochar, Musar’s patriarch of the last several decades. He passed away several years ago but as he would have wished, his wines carry on his legacy. We tasted reds and whites going back to the 1960s, and with each decade, the wines only intensified the crowd's shock and awe. They are the definition of sublime.
 
We can assure you with unshakeable confidence that for decades, Musar has crafted some of the greatest and most significant wines on the planet. These are earthy, savory terroir-driven wines for meditation over several hours. Enjoying a bottle of Musar is like having a conversation in a dark bar in Beirut with the most interesting man in the world. This is a bottle you decant and meditate over for hours, as it slowly reveals to you its history. If you need a more compelling case, do a quick search for A Wine Worth Fighting For, Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love's 9-page spread in GQ from 2004 profiling Serge Hochar and telling the story of Musar. These wines on offer tonight are all straight from the Musar cellars, and are truly some of the most valued and rare treasures of the wine world. Each year the demand for Musar's wines continues to climb, along with the price, and this incredible opportunity to acquire a vertical of 20 plus year old wines will never be seen at prices this low this again.

"Each of the following wines was aged in the cellars of the estate in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon until their recent release. The "Hochar" is a single vineyard wine blended from Cinsault, Grenache, and Cabernet Sauvignon. It offers more than a glimpse of the magic of the more aged estate releases. The Grand Vin of the estate, Musar Rouge, is a spiritual journey that demands you decant and listen over a couple hours as it slowly unfurls its story. The wines balance a razor edge between fruitful satisfaction and savory, wild indulgence. They demonstrate what wine is all about: one bottle can tell the history of a place, the story of an estate, and the flavor of its terroir. The Musar Rouge is a blend of equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignan, and Cinsault. The flavor is difficult to describe. It evades accurate description as the mysterious Lebanese wine evolves every five minutes in the decanter. Imagine if the ripeness and spice of Châteauneuf-du-Pape was blended with the structure and dusty earth of good mature Bordeaux. I once could say that these are one of the wine world's best kept secrets, but today they are just one of its greatest treasures." - Brandon Kerne, Master Sommelier