木桶酒莊 The Barrel Wines

07/04/2023

Bordeaux in April
fm James Suckling

24/12/2022

time to . . . .

11/05/2022

“The first ever bottle I tasted that was produced by my grandfather, Gaston Hochar Senior. A nose of forest floor followed by a palate of sweet ripe berries, layers of to***co, coffee, liquorice with balanced acidity and SO MUCH freshness. A singular experience from a wine from the early Musar era. ~ Marc Hochar, Chateau Musar

https://iwastoldtherewouldbenomath.wordpress.com/2022/05/05/the-muse-of-chateau-musar/

31/10/2021

15/05/2021

Photographer Haze Kware can truly imagine performances anywhere!

“My goal is always to celebrate every human being in front of my lens. I want to showcase their hard work, and their extraordinary abilities. But beyond their strength, I also do my best to capture their beauty, and of course their stories.”

15/01/2021

https://www.facebook.com/154981997970621/posts/2126586357476832/

Naše vinice počas zimného obdobia ❄️☃️
📍 https://www.elesko.sk

16/12/2020

https://youtu.be/jfZBH0XiuDU

2020 : A wine to remember, a year to forget,2021 : Bound to be better !2020: Se souvenir du vin, oublier l'année,2021 : Forcément meilleur !Best wishes / Mei...

13/10/2020

WINE and WAR, a feature-length documentary seven years in the making about Lebanon, wine and conflict has just been released. Inspired by the book Wines of Lebanon, the film celebrates the resilience of the Lebanese entrepreneur through the prism of wine. It is a story of how Lebanon’s winemakers have, for thousands of years, gone about their work in war, famine, occupation and the constant hum of political instability.

WINE and WAR is available for viewing on www.wineandwar.com

All proceeds from the film’s sales will go to CAP HO, a charity providing medical care to children without insurance in Lebanon and to help rebuild the St George Hospital which was devastated in the August 4 Beirut explosion.

A resilient group of Lebanese winemakers stuck in the crossfire. When their grapes are on the line, it’s do or die.

09/09/2020

06/08/2020

good to hearing from them

Chateau Musar in Lebanon and the U.K. would like to thank everyone for their kind words and support at this very difficult time. We are pleased to report that the Chateau Musar team is safe and ready for the start of the Bekaa Valley harvest at the end of the week. For those who have requested to help the people of Beirut in a material way, we can recommend both the Lebanese Red Cross and the Arcenciel NGO.
https://www.supportlrc.app/donate/index.html
https://www.arcenciel.org/en/
Our sincere thanks and regards

arcenciel made it its mission to promote diversity, integration, and development in different ways.To do that, 5 programs were established

23/07/2020

Let’s support “WINE and WAR” (a film documentary about producing wine in Lebanon during war time) in their noble fundraising to donate $50,000 to the Lebanese charity Cap-Ho, that provides medical treatment for uninsured children in Lebanon. For donation: https://rb.gy/cujxqx

28/12/2019

【派對美食對對碰：Pizza X Merlot！】
派對食Pizza是常識吧，一塊塊鬆軟嘅Pizza應該配邊種波爾多美酒先叫識食？例如人人都熱愛嘅紅醬(如番茄醬)Pizza，最啱就係配搭波爾多嘅Merlot，Merlot葡萄皮薄，圓潤飽滿，單寧及酸度都比較低，仲可以帶出番茄嘅鮮味，果香濃郁，酒體適中順口嘅Merlot配搭Pizza嘅驚喜大家不妨試試吖！

#派對美食對對碰

24/11/2019

【波爾多2018年係絕佳年份？】
根據今年嘅最新報告指出，香港重登波爾多葡萄酒出口市場貨值首位，佔出口總銷售額的16%，大家對波爾多美酒嘅熱情果然非常澎湃！近年世界各地都受極端氣候影響，但報告指出「2018年」竟成為優秀年份，即使波爾多地區部分葡萄園遭逢春霜、冰雹及黴菌等氣候破壞，亦無阻佳釀出世！2018年份當中乾白葡萄酒、甜白葡萄酒及紅酒嘅水準更加係不容忽視！大家下次入手波爾多美酒嘅時候，可以特別留意一下「2018年」，話唔定會有驚喜㗎！
#2018年 #絕佳年份

11/10/2018

Grace Vineyard 怡園酒莊

Harvesting

17/08/2018

Chateau Musar

Chateau Musar Syrah Harvest 2018

14/08/2018

Alsace Wine Official Hong Kong

阿爾薩斯葡萄酒有別於一般葡萄酒之處，在於所有阿爾薩斯葡萄酒都係屬於53個法定地區葡萄酒品種之一(Appellation d`Origine Controlee, AOC)，並受到法國原產地名稱管理委員會(Institut National des Appellations d`Origine) 嘅嚴格控制，以確保其質量及成品嘅一致性。而當中有51種AOC葡萄酒更屬最高級別 Grands Crus。

AlsaceWines

31/10/2017

木桶酒莊 The Barrel Wines's cover photo

21/08/2017

It is not our cart !!
真的不是我們的產物呵！！

13/02/2017

Timeline Photos

23/01/2017

Chateau Musar

Chateau Musar

Wine Pairings That Break the Rules: Rosé with Chili ? Try 2012 Chateau Musar Rosé.

You may get a few eye rolls when you pull out a rosé rather than beer or red wine to accompany your chili. But trust Ford. “Chili is a complex and weighty dish, and Chateau Musar is a bold wine to say the least,” he says of the wine from Lebanon. “Its brief oak aging allows it to provide a shelf to suspend all of those different spices and aromatics that you get with each spoon of the good stuff.”

http://vinepair.com/articles/its-time-to-swap-your-reds-and-your-whites/

14/12/2016

Chateau Musar Christmas Tree in Beirut Souks.

03/11/2016

A Tribute for Serge Hochar — at Holy Spirit University of Kaslik - USEK

07/06/2015

Last party here

07/06/2015

Last morning in Hung Hom

02/01/2015

他 親和..爽快..認真..決斷
在烽火連年的日子裏 仍堅持信念, 堅定前進; 他不戰而勝, 成為巨人
今天, 上天要他停下來, 好好享受成果
他的教導 他的精神 將永遠長留在我們心中
永遠懐念 Serge Hochar

RIP Serge Hochar
by Jancis Robinson
Bad news travels horribly fast. Thanks to a call from an audibly shaken Michael Broadbent, I was given to understand that Serge Hochar of Chateau Musar suffered a fatal accident while swimming on a New Year’s holiday in Mexico. By the time of the call about an hour ago Twitter was already populated with tributes to this quite remarkable man.

Serge was so much more than a winemaker and the driving force behind Lebanon’s best-known winery. He had a strong spiritual character, but was very far from ascetic – positively impish in fact. Always great fun, he gave the impression of having a deep understanding of human nature and of understanding much more than superficialities. I always enjoyed his company enormously on the many occasions our paths crossed and we talked about very much more than wine matters.

I spent the most concentrated time with him way back in September 1980 when he – some would say recklessly – invited me and the late Tony Lord, then editor of Decanter magazine, to visit his family’s winery in Lebanon. We had to pass through many an armed checkpoint to reach it in a suburb of Beirut. The city’s walls then were already pockmarked by the scars of war but the Lebanese spirit was alive and well. On the first night he took us to a glamorous outdoor restaurant overlooking the city. No-one even blinked when we heard sinister booms in the distance and the lights went out for a few minutes. I remember Serge insisting I try the local speciality of raw liver – a mistake that I certainly don’t hold against him.

If I remember correctly, Serge was running the Leonidas chocolates concession in a smart boutique on the ground floor of the apartment block where he lived, but in terms of wine he was most famous for continuing to truck grapes from the Bekaa Valley where they were all then grown to his winery in Beirut throughout the civil war of 1975 to 1990. As a direct result, in 1984 publisher Colin Parnell made Serge Decanter’s first-ever Man of the Year, and he continued to play a part in the elevation and celebrations of his successors. We will miss him horribly.

Chateau Musar was created by Serge’s father Gaston who planted his first vines in 1930 and was particularly inspired by Ronald Barton of Chateau Léoville Barton who was stationed in Lebanon during the second world war. Gaston’s oldest son originally studied engineering (as did both Serge’s sons Gaston and Marc) but soon became determined to study at the feet of Emile Peynaud in Bordeaux. He somehow persuaded his father to move aside so that by 1959 he was officially Chateau Musar’s winemaker declaring, ‘I want to make the wine my way, and I want it to be known worldwide.’

He achieved both these aims and by 1977 he claims to have developed the recipe for Musar reds. Musar’s are some of the world’s most distinctive wines – you love them or are bemused by them. They seem proud to have escaped the winds of modern winemaking fashion. Wines of all colours (and they tend to brown relatively early) are designed to age much longer than most – they are still selling wines from the 1950s according to their website www.chateaumusar.com - and they seem to delight in their defiantly unmanipulated character. The red is a blend of fruit from old Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignan and Cinsault bushvines and the even more unusual deep gold wines are oak-fermented blends of the local Obaideh and Merwah varieties.

The links between the Hochar and Broadbent families have been particularly strong ever since Michael B declared Chateau Musar 1967 red ‘the find of the fair’ after the seminal Bristol wine trade fair in 1979. Michael served Musar at his 75th birthday dinner in London’s Vintners’ Hall and his son Bartholomew who has represented Musar wines in the US for decades has been lamenting the loss of ‘my second father’ on social media.

Serge’s son Gaston now manages the day-to-day running of the Chateau Musar winery, his brother Marc its commercial aspects, taking over from Serge’s brother Ronald. I wish them the very, very best.