2019 Chateau Musar Hochar Pere et Fils Red Bekaa Valley Lebanon 750 ml

Like the French Laundry, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, and countless other MICHELIN-starred restaurants, we have numerous vintages of Chateau Musar resting in our cellars.

Revered as the “Lafite of Lebanon,” Musar’s classically structured Grand Vin responds famously well to Brunello-like patience. That’s why so many sommeliers ALSO buy deeply into the cult estate’s coveted “second wine,” the Hochar Père et Fils, to pour by the glass.

The vineyard sourced for the Hochar Père et Fils was first planted in the 1940s. Like Musar’s flagship, this cuvée mixes both Bordeaux and Rhône grapes, but whereas that bottling centers around Carignan, this bottling gains greater red-berry suavity from Grenache, which gets blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cinsault.

This old-vine red captures that signature Musar magic—spicy, hedonistic, and filled with rich, dark fruit—in an immediate, accessible, opulently seductive style. In our experience, this one goes so fast it doesn’t even make it to the cellar.

Is there a winery with a more dramatic story than Château Musar?

Founded in 1930, the estate occupies an 18th-century castle just north of Beirut. That location put it practically on the frontlines of the country’s 15-year civil war. But even as Chateau Musar’s wines were being crafted amidst falling shrapnel, the bottles found their way onto the tables of some of the world’s finest restaurants.

2019 was a wet vintage, refreshing soils parched by several years of drought. Rains pushed everything—from flowering to harvest—back by two weeks, but the resulting vitality in the wines made it a banner year for reds at Musar, especially the Hochar Père et Fils. Combining aristocratic, Old World structure with Mediterranean verve, there’s nothing else like it.