1998 Chateau Musar Bekaa Valley Lebanon 750 ml

Chateau Musar produces one of the most celebrated and storied wines on the planet—but today’s 1998 is much more than that. With just over two decades of cellaring AT THE CHÂTEAU, it’s an ultra-rare, painstakingly cared-for wine that is drinking in its absolute prime. 

Musar is one of the world’s most cherished estates, and this is their Grand Vin, a singular wine that combines the breadth and spice of a mature Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the aromatic lift of a balsamic-like Brunello, and the savory muscle of an aged Barolo. It is the kind of bottle that demands a slow, measured experience, and in time reveals many expressions—and an air of antiquity, thanks to its Fertile Crescent origins.

The legend of Musar looms much larger than the world of wine. One of the most famous episodes involving Musar took place during the Lebanese civil war, when owner Serge Hochar found himself in his Beirut apartment during an intense shelling. As shrapnel burst through the window on the floor below him, Hochar became certain that he was living his last night on Earth. So he opened a bottle of 1972 Musar, poured the wine into a Baccarat glass, and sipped it over the course of twelve intense hours. Finally, the attack ended. The next day, Hochar had one less bottle of Musar. But he still had his life, and the spirit that drove him to make wine, undeterred by the 15-year war that ravaged his country. That spirit lives on in every bottle of this storied wine.   

Chateau Musar leapt onto the international scene in 1979, appraised by legendary Christie’s wine director Michael Broadbent as the “find” of the Bristol Wine Fair. They had been producing show-stopping wine from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley since 1930. But Lebanon’s raging civil war forced them to find new markets internationally, and not long after they turned their focus abroad, the critics, sommeliers, and global wine community were all enthralled.

At Musar, 100-year-old vines of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, and Carignan benefit from 300 days of sunshine a year, cool nights, limestone soils, 4,000 feet of elevation—and of course their singular winemaking philosophy, the legacy of Serge Hochar. A natural winemaker long before it was trendy, Hochar embraced a non-interventionist approach, and that is apparent in Musar’s impossible-to-copy vivacity, energy, and earthiness.