The Cambridge Musarathon

A marathon Musar vertical — with fizz to start and an integrated cheese tasting from Rennet & Rind

• **Chateau Musar — Musar is a family winery established in Ghazir Lebanon.**
• **Rennet & Rind — Buy British Artisan Cheese Online**

A Cambridge wine-friend pinged me a note to say he was organising a tasting and would I like to come along.

Feeling the needing to get out a bit more due to an intense day-job, I readily agreed without particularly bothering to check what it involved.

It turned out to be a vertical tasting of various Musar vintages in a Cambridge college:

• from 1988 to 2016 for reds
• from 1993 to 2018 for whites
• a lone 2003 Hochar Père et Fils second wine

Plus a matching cheese tasting with local affineur Rennet & Rind.

I have done various Musar mini-verticals over the years, but never anything quite as extensive as this. And it is always fascinating to do a deep dive on a particular wine, to explore the effects of vintage variation and development with age.

The simple facts of Musar are that it is a Lebanese winery based in the Beka’a Valley making mostly red wines from Bordeaux and Mediterranean grape varieties 1,000 metres above sea level, where there are 300 days of sunshine a year and temperatures average 25°C across the year, making organic farming almost a default setting.

These details alone barely suffice to explain the cult status of Musar. For a few decades, it was held in similar regard to higher end classics such as Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rioja. More recently, it has become something of a geek’s niche, a bit of a curio.

Unlike Napa Cabs or Adelaide Hills Chardonnay, Musar is very much Its Own Thing and does not attempt to imitate other, more widely-recognised (and popular) styles.

In marketing strategy terms, it has an extremely well-defined proposition; it knows what it wants to be and what it does not want to be and appeals to a particular section of the market, rather than trying to please everyone and no-one.

So what does Musar taste like?

A Musar Snob (yes, they do exist) will tell you that it is instantly recognisable; and she would be right. Its main characteristic, I find, is a dried-out rosehip note that makes the wine taste old-when-young yet young-when-old. This, then, is a Benjamin Button of a wine.

Taste a recent vintage and that rosehip note in amongst the red fruits will have you thinking that the wine has peaked and is starting to tire. Yet in a decades-old bottle, the red fruits are still there in a more mellow way and the dried rosehip feels fully integrated and a part of the savoury whole.

Fizz on arrival

We started with two different sparklers — a vintage Crémant d’Alsace Riesling which showed the plush ripeness of its region and a Hambledon BdB ESW Champagne-alike with all the elegant, poised tension and biscuity brioche you would expect from a top-notch traditional-method fizz.

Musar Reds

We tasted the wines in pairs and, rather than follow vintage order in either direction, Alex had opted to show two mid-level years to start as a palate acclimatisation, followed by braces of his favourite vintages whilst minds were still alert, then move on to some deeper cuts that may or may not interest.

Serge Hochar always intended that every vintage be different — ‘to make wine on the edge’ as he put it, adding ‘I once produced a wine that was technically perfect, but it lacked the charms of imperfection.’

2001, 2015: the older wine showed better initially with signature dried red fruits and complex, harmonious savouriness. And yet the 2015 quietly improved in the glass, becoming more harmonious and knitted-together.

Rather than give detailed tasting notes for each wine, I have scored them within their relative buckets:

Benchmark vintages

2001, 2015: Very Good; initially Good, then Very Good.

Older vintages

These were the best wines — better because they were older, or older because they were better? In many ways, it’s a moot point and probably a bit of both.

1999, 2005: Very Good+; Very Good Indeed

1995, 1998: Very Good Indeed; Very Good+

1988, 1991: Very Good+, Very Good

Younger vintages

With more of the simple ripe fruit and less of the signature rosehip, these felt somewhat conventional, as if there had been a conscious decision to tone down the inherent Musar character.

2009, 2010: Good+, Very Good

2013, 2016: Good+, Good+

The Whites

There were three vintages of white — all the same deep-gold colour with a complex savouriness.

The 2018 and 2001 were almost indistinguishable, with only a little more youthful plushness perceptible in the younger wine despite two decades’ age difference.

Only the 1993 gave any hint of its age with a mature saline savouriness.

Hochar Père et Fils Red

A second wine with over 20 years’ age, this was perfectly fine, but nothing special. Scored a workmanlike Good.

Afterthought:

With a few leftovers at the end, I claimed bottles from 1991 and 2016 for Mrs CWB and #1 child to experience the Musar Phenomenon.

In 1991, I had not even met my future girlfriend and wife and #1 child was aged minus 12 years.

It’s not often that you do a tasting and a decade-old wine is not only the youngest, but barely ready for drinking.

Both were still showing well after a week in the fridge — they were set aside due to work constraints and the smaller matter of accountancy exams to be passed (not mine, that was a long time ago).

1 child who has a fondness for more savoury styles (sherry, orange wine, fizz) preferred the paler, almost sherry-esque 1991, while her mum liked the soft, plush, fruited 2016 better.

The Cheeses

The cheeses from Rennet & Rind merit a proper write-up of their own, but suffice it to say here that, introduced by Perry James Wakeman, all were excellent and one even claimed the title of best cheese in the world.

Others say:

The Wine Society: Chateau Musar Wines — Buy Online | The Wine Society