Chateau Kefraya Tinto 2007

Kefraya red is a red wine made by the heirs of Michel de Bustros with the Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Monastrell varieties in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. It is the original wine, the one that started it all, and is made from 22 hectares of old vineyards that were planted more than 30 years ago. It is vinified in vats, aged in French oak barrels between 18 and 24 months depending on the vintage and can be enjoyed young or beyond a decade.

Château Kefraya represents the origin of Mediterranean wine. Not in vain, the origin of wine as we know it today is linked to the cultivation of the vine in the orchard that, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, we call Mesopotamia and in its extension to the north towards the Caucasus. Not far from there, on the Lebanese border with Syria, is the Bekaa Valley region, where the Phoenicians were first, then the Romans, the Ottomans banned wine, and where Michel de Bustros (1929-2016) founded Chateau Kefraya from vines planted in 1951, marketing its first harvest in 1979. Always with a purpose, that of making wine only with its own grapes, grown on a property that today has 300 hectares planted at 900-1100 meters above the Mediterranean. . A perfect soil for growing vines, without the need for irrigation, which allows sustainable viticulture and the production of the highest quality wines from low yields, barely 30hl per hectare, which in Burgundy would be less than the performance of a Grand Cru. The soils are clayey-calcareous or sandy with gravel depending on the area and are the result of the shocks of the Euro-Asian and African tectonic plates. The Bekaa Valley is simply perfect for making great wines. Added to the aforementioned soils are 900mm of annual rainfall, snow in winter, and a Mediterranean climate tempered by altitude. There is no mildew here. So privileged is the terroir.

Chateau Kefraya produces its wines following a Chateau philosophy, not very different from the one that some of the great Rioja wineries copied from the Bordeaux wineries in the 19th century. But beyond this conception of using our own grapes, of growing the vines that surround the winery, there is a detailed analysis of the micro-plots, advised by Eric Boissenot, with the purpose of producing wine that respects the terroir above manipulation. in the cellar and that give rise to wines that reflect the humility of accepting nature as it is and respecting its harmony. To do this, neither irrigation nor synthetic phytosanitary treatment is used, and even the sulfur levels used are 50% below what is accepted for organic wines. It is harvested manually, the grapes are optically selected, the estates are harvested by microparcels, it is vinified in wooden vats and the aging takes place between 12 and 24 months in French oak barrels, with some wines also being aged in amphorae, as a vestige of Phoenician and Roman times.

In short, a terroir, a soul, a great wine. Always a little further, because as Michel de Bustros said, when the legend does not exist, we will have to create it. Château Kefraya.