Chateau Musar’s Marc Hochar on Natural Winemaking, Lebanese Resilience, and Trusting Your Palate

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Summary

 On this episode of The Sipping Point, Marc Hochar of Chateau Musar takes us inside the storied Lebanese winery his family has nurtured since the 1930s. He shares how their philosophy of natural winemaking and distinctive grape varietals create wines meant to evolve beautifully with age. We talk food pairings, the approachable Jeune Red crafted for younger drinkers, and the grit it takes to make wine in Lebanon’s challenging conditions. At its core, Marc reminds us that wine is a personal journey—and the best palate to trust is your own. 

Takeaways

• Chateau Musar has a legacy dating back to the 1930s.
• Natural winemaking has been part of the winery's DNA since the 1960s.
• Unique grape varietals like Obaideh and Merwah are used in their wines.
• The Jeune Red is designed for younger drinkers and is fruit-forward.
• Resilience is key in navigating the challenges of winemaking in Lebanon.
• The Chateau Musar White & Red are the flagship wine, showcasing elegance and ageability.

Wines Tasted

Chateau Musar White 2018

Musar Jeune Red 2022

Chateau Musar Red 2018

Learn more about the rich history of Chateau Musar and their wines HERE

Transcript

Laurie Forster (00:29)
This week we're going to be joined by Mark Hoshar, a third generation member of Chateau Musar, a Lebanese winery where in Lebanon they've been making wine for over 6,000 years. This is a first for me. I'm so excited to try these wines. But just a quick reminder that on September 24th, just a week from now, is my virtual wine tasting fall in love with the Rhone Valley. We're going to taste three of my favorite wines from the region, talk about the grapes that are grown there, why I love these wines, what

foods, go with them and just have a lot of fun. Also on September 28th, there's going to be an information session to learn more about my upcoming tour, Treasures of Tuscany in 2026. So I hope you will join me at one or both of these events. Just go to thewinecoach.com slash events and you can get all the information to register and join me. All right, Mark Hoschar is a third generation member of the Hoschar family.

of Chateau Musar. This is an iconic Lebanese winery founded by his grandfather in 1930. At just 20 years old, his grandfather Gaston founded the winery inspired by Lebanon's 6,000 year winemaking tradition and his travels in Bordeaux. Mark oversees sales, marketing, strategy and financial affairs, working alongside his family, cousin and brother to produce these elegant,

and natural from the start and age-worthy wines that evolve over time and in the glass.

Laurie Forster (01:54)
Mark, welcome to The Sipping Point.

Marc Hochar (01:56)
thank you, Laurie. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Laurie Forster (01:59)
Awesome. I know you're you're over there in sunny Beirut. I'm here in Maryland on the East Coast of the U.S. just to orient you not far from D.C. And I'm just so excited to talk to you about your legendary winery. It has such a famed history.

Marc Hochar (02:04)
Thanks.

Laurie Forster (02:16)
I'm excited for the conversation. Maybe you could start out, you know, I know a lot of people are familiar with Chateau Musar but maybe many are not. So maybe you could give us a little background on your family's winery and how you became a part of it.

Marc Hochar (02:32)
Well, our family dates, mean at least the winery component of our family dates back to 1930s. So that was when my grandfather, who was called Gaston at the time, started the winery. He relied or he basically delved into what was happening in the...

Phoenician times in Lebanon in terms of wine production. The Phoenicians, our ancestors going back to between 3 and 6,000 years ago, used to produce wines in the area. And when he went to France to study medicine, came back not really liking medicine, but really loving wine, he thought, okay, this is probably a much better...

than being a doctor, I'll just produce wines and make people happy. And so he decided to start the winery. So that was in 1930. He actually even started selling a lot of the wines to the French army, who was supposed to be Lebanon between the two world wars. Eventually, then my father and my uncle came in. So that's the second generation. We're talking late 50s.

Laurie Forster (03:10)
Hey

Marc Hochar (03:27)
early 60s. At that point, my father became the winemaker, so that's Serge. And he did quite an important thing for us as a winery, which is that he took over from my grandfather the winemaking, although he was young and basically had almost no experience or no experience in winemaking. But he had this approach of this philosophy that if

the Phoenicians were making wines many, many thousands of years ago without additives, without treatment, without any technology. Then, and they made it very successfully because this is how wine spread across the Mediterranean and eventually made it through to Europe. If they've done it, you know, many thousands of years ago, let's try to do the same. so whereas in the sixties, whole wine community was embracing new technologies, adding

yeasts, adding components, membranes to control the wines, he went exactly the opposite way, which was we stopped using yeasts at the time, we stopped filtering our wines, our reds, we stopped fining them. And all of that led to what we called, or my father called non-interventionism in terms of winemaking, meaning the least possible impact and external influence on the wines apart

obviously from weather and making some choices like terroir, what to plant and what to blend, etc. And so, you know, today people talk about natural winemaking, organic, maybe biodynamic, but that's been part of our DNA, you know, since the 60s.

Laurie Forster (04:55)
And your father studied

in Bordeaux, correct?

Marc Hochar (04:58)
So yeah, my father started at the winery in 59, not making the wines but bottling and getting involved and started making the wines one or two years later, studied in Bordeaux in 64, came back with a little bit of a Bordeaux twist in terms of how he was making the wines afterwards. And then in the seventies decided, no, no, I want to go back to the way I was doing the wines before, as in before going to Bordeaux. So he used the knowledge he got.

but used more of his perception, taste, and I guess local influence in terms of how he thought the wine should taste in Lebanon. And this is how we got to, I guess, the signature of Musar that we still hold to today.

Laurie Forster (05:37)
love that. And yeah, you were way ahead of your time, right? Since natural wine seems to be like the hot topic today, and you've just been doing it all along, right? Now, explain where the winery is situated. And I know your vineyards are a distance away because of politics and and how the countries were being drawn at that time. So I'd love to know a little bit more about that.

Marc Hochar (05:47)
Absolutely.

in history.

Yeah, so Lebanon is a very tiny country. It's 120 miles long along the coastline on the Mediterranean Sea and 30 miles inland on average. But you have two chains of mountains to the east and the Bekaa Valley, which is at roughly 3,000 feet between these two chains of mountains that go up to 10,000 feet is really the breadbasket of Lebanon. And so this is where when my grandfather started, he thought, okay,

we will plant there. We'll ask farmers. He didn't have any land himself, but he asked farmers to plant. But the winery he thought should be closer to home, to the Christian areas we're Christian, because the country was a new country in the 1930s. It was only 10 years old as it was born out of the end of the Turkish Empire at the end of World War I. So end of 1918.

And so he decided, okay, let's put the winery in an area that we know. He actually started in an old convent or palace called the Mzarr Palace, which was owned by his cousin, a 400 year old palace. And it's in the cellars of that palace that he really started at the beginning. And then as it grew, eventually he built the house next door, which is where he built the further winery where we actually today have Chateau Mzarr.

But the origin of the name Musar comes from that palace, the Musar Palace. And so what we do is we transport all the grapes from the vineyards to the winery. It's roughly a three-hour truck drive.

Laurie Forster (07:16)
Love it.

Wow, that's a little bit of logistics in there that you have to figure out, I bet. And the great varieties that you're using, specifically with the Chateau Moussa White are new ones for me that I have not heard that much about. So maybe we could start there and then later we'll talk about your famed reds.

Marc Hochar (07:28)
I guess.

Laurie Forster (07:45)
but I'd like to know a little bit more about the two grapes you're using in your moosar white.

Marc Hochar (07:50)
Yes, so very unusual varietals. Varietals that probably existed at the time of the Phoenicians. They are local to Lebanon and they're called Obaideh and Merwah. It's difficult to remember because you're not going to be exposed to these varietals outside of Lebanon and mostly outside of Musar.

But they are amazing, they ripen very late. The alcohol levels goes up to 12, 12 and a half, although they are harvested in October, which is extremely late for us. We're a very warm country with a lot of sun. so low alcohol level, a lot of time on the cluster in the sun. So you end up with a lot of concentration, very old vines, some of the oldest

ones we have are more than 100 years old on original roots, but the new ones that we've been planting in the Bekaa Valley floor, which is where our reds also are typically located, are now on American rootstock because there is Phylloxera in that area. The very old vines that my grandfather used to source were in the mountains even higher up, remote villages where Phylloxera hadn't hit.

And it creates wines because probably of this very old, this maturation process that's so slow on the vine, wines that are extremely intense, rich, elegant, and an amazing ability to age. So think what you're tasting is the 18 vintage, which is current vintage for us. 18 is seven years old, that's current vintage.

Laurie Forster (09:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

I know

I was going to say this is just so opposite of what I normally think about white wines because typically we're told, know, drink your whites between one and three years or one and five years, but you're not even releasing these. know, that's seven years ago now. So tell me a little bit about is that if I tasted this seven years ago, would we not love it or why do we wait to release it?

Marc Hochar (09:34)
Mmm.

It's a very good question. Well, it takes roughly one year for us to produce these wines and put them in a bottle. They're fermented in wood, stays in wood, you know, on leases for six to nine months, then blended and bottled. So it's relatively fast. But during their early phase, they tend to be wines that are a little bit austere, very tight.

And that's the reason we typically wait. We could release it a little bit earlier, but you do realize when you... What makes Musar Musar is the ability of the wines to evolve in the glass. As you open your bottle, as you swirl your glass, your wine in the glass, you know, it changes. And if you're drinking that wine too early on, the evolution is going to be slower.

Laurie Forster (10:08)
Hmm.

Marc Hochar (10:17)
as in if you drink it after two years or three years. If you wait seven years, which is what we do over six years, let's say you start to have a better evolution in the glass. If you wait for your bottle to age to 15, 20 years, as you open it, every bottle is a journey. You go from a starting point, which is maybe a little bit more introvert, more tight. And as it opens up, you start to see everything coming out. mean, we're talking, depending on the vintage, flowers.

Laurie Forster (10:31)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (10:42)
rose petals, then eventually you get exotic fruits. That's when they're young. As they get older you get dried fruits, nuts, apricots, honey, melon, honeydew. And then after they get much much older, 20 years plus, then it really also can, you can get more sherry notes on it sometimes, maybe whiskey notes. It's a permanent evolution. This is why these ones are...

Laurie Forster (10:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And there's

some herbal notes here as well, which are really, really lovely. ⁓ I think in your tasting notes, you said oregano, and pine, definitely there is this variety. It's not just fruit bomb or all earth. You've got all these different components. And I love the idea of, you know, you're making a huge investment in holding these wines. So you feel they're.

Marc Hochar (11:08)
Absolutely.

No.

Laurie Forster (11:28)
ready to go rather than releasing them into the market and kind of letting people decide if they're going to wait or not. What's the effect on the winery given that, I guess, you've got to wait seven years from your vintage to get it over to me here in the US?

Marc Hochar (11:42)
Yeah, it takes time, so that means also money. It takes a commitment. I don't think it's something that's easy to do if you're starting a winery from scratch, because if you think of planting, you start to get grapes after five years. If you then make your wine after five years and then have to wait another seven years to sell your first bottle, it means that between your first planting and your first bottle sale, you're talking 12 years. That's a lot of time.

So you have to build it up over time. But we're lucky to have almost 100 years of history now at Musar. And so we've gradually been able to figure out what is the right time to release our wines and build that into our, I guess, our...

Laurie Forster (12:07)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (12:21)
workflow and our wine flow. So we have entry-level wines that are sold earlier after two or three years depending whether they're red, white, rosé. But the Chateau label which is our top white, top red, and top rosé is bit not... it's not aged as much, it could, but it's not aged as much. But the white and the red are sold after seven years. And this is where we feel that they can start to show. For us, it's more important that the wines show well.

then we just sell them quickly. That's for us, it's not the important part. It's really the experience, this is what counts.

Laurie Forster (12:53)
we're all about food and wine here in my house, I saw in another interview, you say wines can be a meditation. And I do get that when you have a truly excellent wine like this. But if you were going to incorporate this into a meal per se, what would be one of your favorite things?

Marc Hochar (12:55)
Yes.

So, depends whether you're talking about the younger white, like the 18 vintage or something which is 15 years older, or like 20 years old. But if you're in the younger whites, have some, I think any type of vegetables would be great. think some fish, but you need the fish that's already had a, a bit of substance because if it's too light, I think the wine will just probably overpower it. And so the balance will not be great.

Laurie Forster (13:14)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (13:31)
dishes maybe with nuts. Lamb would be actually amazing, but not, I mean lamb is very versatile as a dish because you can put it with our reds because our reds also have this animalistic component to them, but you can also put them with white. It really depends on the sauce that you use. Like a completely grilled lamb, I would typically put with white. A lamb with a sauce and everything that's a bit more reddish in color.

Laurie Forster (13:39)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (13:54)
would end up with a red pairing. And so this is how I would look at it. I'll tell you the one of the most interesting pairings I've had with the white that was done actually with the 75 white. And at the time that was probably 10 years ago. So 75 now is 50 years old. It was a 40 year old wine at the time. And it was a dry aged steak.

because a 40 year old white misère has so much power intensity. It has actually a bit too powerful for the steak, to be honest. Obviously, as soon as you put a red sauce, the white wines don't work, but on a pure grilled component, it was absolutely outstanding. All the earthiness, the mushrooms that come out of the wine were matching the dry aged steak perfectly.

Laurie Forster (14:13)
Wow. Yes.

That's excellent.

Marc Hochar (14:38)
So.

Laurie Forster (14:39)
Yeah, and there is a creaminess here. I know we didn't necessarily mention, but this does spend, I believe, like nine months in French oak. So, yes.

Marc Hochar (14:47)
In French oak, And

you have two varietals. the Obaideh is a little bit similar in style in terms of its characteristics to Chardonnay. So that's where the creaminess component might kick in. The Merwah is more similar to Sémillon. And so sometimes our wines are compared to dry soternes because that's Sémillon.

And so depending on the vintage of Musar, sometimes that Mawar component kicks in a bit more, and all of a sudden it has hints of what you would expect from a white Sauternes But sometimes, you know, it's a chameleon, really chameleon.

Laurie Forster (15:22)
that's the whole idea of vintage, right? When you make vintage wines, each year is expressing same grapes, but different year, different weather, different conditions. And so I find that fun. It's not Coca-Cola. We don't want wine to taste the same way every single year. And so it's probably exciting and terrifying in the same breath, I guess, as a winemaker.

Marc Hochar (15:45)
I think we view wine more like a philosophy of life and it's part of the way people have been living here for 6,000 years. life is not a copy paste or repeat, repeat every day of what you do.

life has good days, bad days, you wake up in the morning, sometimes you're, you know, let's go and get it. The other day you're just, you know, a little bit more or less active. And it's the same with wine. so repeating the same experience over and over is not what life is about. And this is not what we want to express in our wines. And so we're never looking for

I think, yeah, a copy paste experience. And so we rely on weather. And even by the way, if you take the same bottle of wine or no, all the same wine and open it today in one environment and then open it tomorrow in a different environment, even by changing temperature, person you're drinking it with, food, same bottle of Musar, you will be surprised that you might have two completely different experiences. And this is the beauty I think about.

about what we do. It's not for everybody's taste. You people who drink champagne want to drink exactly the same thing every time, which I mean, in most champagnes at least. But with our wines, what you get is a journey for every single bottle. Either you embrace it or maybe this Musar is not for you, but for those who embrace it, they love it because then they get that journey.

Laurie Forster (17:07)
we've kind of touched already on natural winemaking that really your dad kind of started this winery with in mind for the most part to do it the natural way, the way it was done thousands of years ago. But of course now there's many winemakers all over the world taking part in this movement called natural wine. And that's gotten a lot of attention.

in recent years, are you involved in the natural wine movement? Are you like the head of the natural wine movement or what are your thoughts on that?

Marc Hochar (17:38)
look, for us, and we're not the only ones who have embraced that approach, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago, there are many wineries around the world who have. I mean, it's really not just Musar. I think then it's a question of...

ability to reach the market and whether people learned about it through Musar or through another winery. I think we tried to be above trends and marketing. It's our identity. The white that you just tasted, I can tell you when we launched it really in international markets in the 80s, were wines that were not understood.

They were against the whole trend of what white wine was about at the time. And there was a lot of pushback. And we insisted, we thought, OK, this is the identity of these two grapes. This is the identity of Musar with these two grapes. And we want to make sure that people get it. And it took 20 more years. Eventually now, people really start to get them. And you have people who fall in love with our Chateau Musar White.

And some people who, again, don't really like it. But it's really about creating that identity that's very strong. And so we don't surf a wave of marketing on natural winemaking. just, we have an approach which is what I call natural winemaking. But it's not what we put on the label or anything like that. We actually even fall in what I would call the classical wine category because some natural wines tend to be a bit more

funky, you know, our wines, although they're made in the natural way, taste like more classic, elegant, refined. You know, I would call it the city rat versus the country rat. The country rat would be the natural wine, male movement, and maybe the city rat is more the one who's in the city. And, you know, we fall in between these two.

Laurie Forster (19:11)
Yeah.

Yes, it is a beautiful wine. And I really appreciate being able to taste it when you think it's at its best. But also, I love the idea of seeing. We don't get to taste a lot of whites with age. Lots of people drink it fresh. So it's exciting to see that you can find older vintages. And really, if you're a collector or somebody who loves to see the evolution,

it sounds like this is a great place to do it.

Marc Hochar (19:43)
You should, by the way, Laurie, on this, now that you've opened your bottle and you've tasted it, what I would recommend is that you close it, don't put it in the fridge, don't take out the air, just put a regular cork, and then taste it again. And then again, every day for the next month. And really taste it over a month. And then a month you'll have, you'll start to get the impression of what that wine could get to if it was aged 20 years.

because that evolution will happen with your bottle just leaving it open over that period of time.

Laurie Forster (20:08)
Interesting.

Okay, that's my homework. I will do that, I will do that. All right, so let's talk a little bit about red wines. And the next one I believe that you're in the order that we should taste is the Jeune Red, which is, released earlier than your other wines and really is meant for earlier drinking and maybe a younger market. And these days, at least in the US, all we talk about is Gen Z, which is, you know, our

Marc Hochar (20:15)
Yes, exactly. ⁓

Dread.

Laurie Forster (20:39)
our 20 year olds and how do we get them to drink more wine? But tell me a little bit about this wine. I love the label by the way. know, the Chateau Musar are very classic, but this is a little bit more of a modern twist to it. So tell me about this one.

Marc Hochar (20:40)
Yes.

Jeune Red, was launched as a, you know, we had an entry-level wine, you know, since the beginning, but the Jeune label and name, the label is a bit different than this one, but the name was launched roughly 20 years ago. And the idea was to try to bring in a Musar to a younger audience, a wine that is more accessible, understandable, less complex.

that doesn't necessarily need age and which is mostly focused on fruit because this is a wine that doesn't go through oak aging at all so that it remains on the fruit and fresh. And when you're a young drinker, you're looking initially for maybe a more funky label and then also for flavor profile that you recognize and that's usually fruit. And so this particular wine is a blend of Cinsault roughly 50%. That's the majority of the wines.

And then the rest is Shiraz and a little bit of Cabernet Sauvignon. And the reason we put a lot of Cinsault in all of our wines, and in particular in the younger wines, is that it's the drinkability factor of our wines. Cinsault, it's what I would call the Pinot Noir of the South in terms of lighter body, lighter structure, more drinkable, less tannins. And it really brings in the...

the ease and accessibility of the wines. So for a young drinker, for me this is beautiful. Some of the older drinkers love our Jeune, but it's not really similar to the style of our top label, the Chateau label, which is a bit more complex and age-worthy.

Laurie Forster (22:19)
Well, it smells very fresh. I know that this is aged in concrete. I did see that in your tasting notes. So you're not getting that oak influence here, if you will. But a lot of the French wines that I love are not aged in oak either. So it's not unusual to use this concrete method, is it?

Marc Hochar (22:36)
Concrete is the oldest. No, the oldest would be probably rainforest. we took clay, maybe rocks in Georgia. But otherwise, concrete is the oldest. And then eventually the world moved in the 60s to stainless steel. In our case,

We use stainless steel for the younger Jeune, White and Jeune Rosé because it's very quick process before bottling. For the Reds, the Jeune is at least a year and half before it's bottled. And so we thought, in our experience, concrete allows to give you a little bit more complexity to the White than stainless steel.

Laurie Forster (23:10)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (23:11)
It maybe takes away a little bit of freshness, but the complexity levels brings it up. And for us, complexity experience is much more important than pure freshness. But it's still a two-year-old wine, two and a half year old wine, so that still has a lot of fruit in there.

Laurie Forster (23:23)
Yeah, and

Yeah, 22 vintage, I don't know if we mentioned that. But I love all the red fruit that's in there. But there's also a little bit of an earth note as well. It's not a fruit bomb by any imagination. But it's very smooth. It's just really elegant on the finish.

Marc Hochar (23:45)
Very good.

Laurie Forster (23:45)
And so it's, you're not getting that tannic thing, which some people love and it's great with your meats and all that, and maybe helps a wine age. But this is going to be a crowd pleaser, I guess is in my mind, because, you know, people that maybe like a heavier wine or lighter wine, this is kind of in the middle.

Marc Hochar (24:03)
I think the cabernet and the Syrah component give it bit of the the talents that some people might enjoy and the power but the the Cinsault really then mellows it down and so it's a beautiful it has a beautiful balance between the two and this actually this one can age quite a bit we used to I mean I've tasted some that are more than 10 years old because they're not aged in oak

They will not develop as well as our other, you know, more premium labels, but they would still start to show a bit more earth, which is a bit unusual, but the earth component is really what stands out at Musar and most of our wines as soon as you start to age them. And to be honest, this is the part that we enjoy. The longer you can wait with Musar, the better it is for the wine.

Laurie Forster (24:40)
Mmm.

Marc Hochar (24:46)
whether you can store it and wait 5, 10, 15 years depending on which wine is not maybe everybody's desire. But this is actually the beautiful part of our wines. And because we hold the library of old vintages, you're able actually to buy the older vintages already aged from us rather than having to store them yourselves.

Laurie Forster (25:06)
And curious, you call it Syrah which in Australia is called Shiraz or Shiraz as they say with their lovely accents, which in my studies is the city in Persia. think maybe it's Iran where it's actually located, where they say that's the birthplace of wine or, some of the earliest

Marc Hochar (25:10)
Yes.

Cheers.

person.

Laurie Forster (25:28)
recording. So is it just because you have a little bit more of a French flair to your chateau that you don't call it Shiraz? Or I'm just curious why it's in your neck of the woods, it's never called Shiraz.

Marc Hochar (25:39)
Sure,

yeah, so it's a Syrah because, you know, in Lebanon we speak Arabic, that's our national language, but we also speak a lot of French and English. When you're at school, you actually learn the three languages. And the French were very influential in Lebanon, starting from Napoleon, helping basically support the Christians in the area, who were part of the Ottoman Empire.

and the French were quite often here to help support the Christians. So there's a big community that speaks French and at home we speak French. And so for us, it was only natural when we went into wine to actually use the French names. And this is why I guess we're also Chateau and not something else. I guess that's the heritage that we've had of our French influence in Lebanon.

Laurie Forster (26:22)
And I understand since the winery was started with your grandfather, you've made a wine in every single vintage except 1976, I believe is what I saw. And given there's a lot of things going on in your neck of the woods of the world, how do you kind of handle the challenges of things changing politically and militarily and everything else?

Marc Hochar (26:46)
It's a good question. during the civil war in Lebanon, that was from 75 until 91, there's only one year, which is 76, where we couldn't produce. Prior to that, my father was still experimenting in some vintages. So we have some vintages that we basically, we did not produce, at least not at the chateau level, chateau being our top premium label.

And then since then we've had every vintage. 92 we had a problem at the winery, but that was not linked to war. So that vintage doesn't exist anymore. otherwise, look, we always manage. Lebanon is maybe the phoenix that rises from the ashes. Our resilience here is something that you are born into. You don't have a choice. It's part of the region. It's part of...

living here and dealing with issues as they come up. So a lot of people ask me, know, how can you do it? And I say, you know, everybody who's having to deal with the problem eventually finds a solution. you know, each in his own way, you know, suffering or not from it. But in the end, we've been

country invaded by so many different invaders over time that we got, I guess, used to it and we just, you know, learned to cope, to be resilient and to just continue, continue, continue, which is what we've done for like now 95 years. Although, you know, as you say, we missed a few years, but not that many after all.

Laurie Forster (28:00)
Love it.

Resilience in a bottle. So I think that's a perfect segue to the Chateau Musar Red, which is the third of the three wines I have here for us to discuss. I know this is a very special wine for you and for the winery and the family. So tell me your thoughts on this wine and a little bit about.

Marc Hochar (28:06)
Exactly, yes.

Laurie Forster (28:24)
what you hope to express in the glass.

Marc Hochar (28:26)
So this is our top label. This is the wine that my father really built the whole winery on in terms of flavor profile, ageability, elegance. You know, this is our cheval de bataille as we say in French. It's a blend of Cabernet, Carignan and Cinsault, a third each.

And I'm going to describe you a little bit how these three varietals build the wine. And I say build because we almost think of wine making as Lego. I you use different varietals, different terroirs, different plots of land, different maturities and ages of vines to create the most complex and balanced wine you can. And within that wine, Cabernet Sauvignon is what I would call is the skeleton of our wine.

It's if you were to compare it to let's say to a human being, it's there, it's needed, but you don't want to look at bones. And so we hide our cabernet. We wrap it with what I call the carignan, which are the muscles. Carignan is really the varietal that holds the wine together.

and is the bridge between the three varietals and Cinsault is the skin. It's really the silky smooth, the thing you want to see. You don't want to see bones, you don't want to see muscles, you want to see skin. And in the end, it's Cinsault that gives this very round component to our wines. It makes it very drinkable when it's eight years old.

Laurie Forster (29:29)
Yeah.

Marc Hochar (29:39)
which is when it's released, but it also allows the wines to age very well. And Cinsault brings also a more earthy component, much faster than Cabernet. So if you're on a pure 100 % Cabernet, you need 20, 25, maybe 30 years to start to move to earth in terms of flavor profile. With Cinsault and Carignan, that switch starts at Musard between 12, 15, 18 years, depending on the vintage. And then at years 20, you really start to have fruit.

Laurie Forster (29:41)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (30:06)
what I call cooked fruit also, but also earth. And this is where the wines really start to be beautiful to drink because they go through so much evolution in the glass. when you have the ability to taste Musar as a seven-year-old wine and as a, 25-year-old wine in parallel, both, and you start to see the difference, it's going to be very difficult for you to, when you have the choice, to go back to the younger wine.

Laurie Forster (30:09)
Mmm.

Marc Hochar (30:31)
Some people might, but the majority would typically eventually figure out that the complexity, the layers, the elegance that you get as the wines get older, you know, tend to push you into that direction. And that's what we

Laurie Forster (30:31)
Hey.

Very elegant on

the palette. mean, amazing. Yes, there's tans there, but these are velvety. These are really a silky finish to it, if that's how I would describe. Yeah, this is...

Marc Hochar (30:51)
Yeah, accessible,

easy. And that's really the component of the Cinsault that makes it so, know, gouléant. It flows, as we say in French. It just flows.

Laurie Forster (31:05)
Nice. And of course, you know, we could say, of course meat because this is like a bigger red. But what would be your favorite pairing for this wine, for this younger version of this wine, I should say.

Marc Hochar (31:15)
Yes, for

the younger version. So here, because you have still a bit more fruit, I would go more like for tomato-based recipe. It could have meat as well, of course. Lamb, I wouldn't do with a vintage that's so young. Lamb and venison, I would go with something that's maybe 15, 20 years of age at Musar. But like a very...

like a red meat, like a steak. Bolognese would be absolutely fantastic with this, absolutely. And so either very red meat, but like young meat, not venison, or anything that's tomato-based would be absolutely outstanding with this one.

Laurie Forster (31:38)
Like a Bolognese. Yeah.

Wonderful.

This is gorgeous. did you always know? Oh, go ahead. It's young. know. It's hard to think of it as young because it's seven years, but.

Marc Hochar (31:54)
It's long. It's not.

Yeah, No, but I also meant it's young, but it's also very long. I don't know. But once you went long, finish. Yeah. And this is what surprises people quite a bit because you would expect that maybe with the blend of Cinsault and Carignan that are not what I would call noble varietals.

Laurie Forster (32:05)
long finish. Yes. Yeah.

Marc Hochar (32:18)
You would expect that the finish would be shorter, but actually we have very low yields at Muzar. We have organic vineyards. We have natural farming. know, absolutely nothing. Everything's done by hand. It's all bush vines. And so you end up with, because of these very low yields, with very intense flavors in our fruit in general. And obviously with grapes as well at the winery. it's so we don't, I don't call

I guess I don't call it concentration, I call it intensity. Concentration gives you this impression that it's heavy, although it may be powerful, but it's very heavy. At Musar it's not, it's very intense. And that is really the beauty of the terroir that we have that allows you to get this very long finish, very intense flavors, but you know, it's almost ethereal still on the palate, which is a it's a rare but beautiful combination.

Laurie Forster (32:46)
Mmm.

Yes, it's not.

Give us an idea of how many bottles or cases of these wines are actually produced just to get, I know you're imported through Broadbent selections. That's how we got introduced. So you are here in the U.S. obviously in various markets, but are we the biggest market? How many of your wines are there to go around? so people know how fast to get out there and buy them up.

Marc Hochar (33:17)
in the US.

Look, the US is now becoming one of our largest markets, but the US as a whole is one market and it's trailing Europe. Europe is roughly the same size in terms of population, but we've been closer to Europe. We have our own company in the UK selling to the whole of Europe, so it's still a bigger market there. But as a single country, the US is now the largest, and we sell all over the country. I spent actually more than...

a month and a half, sometimes two months a year, traveling around the country, doing tastings, wine dinners, events, talking to people. And it's usually a, I enjoy my trips to the US because people are into wine. They're really eager. They're curious. At least the people that I meet are always curious to, you know, to taste different vintages, different varietals, different areas. And, you know, in our case, even different cultures. And it all,

Laurie Forster (34:16)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (34:17)
you know, allows to understand wine better and usually it's a winning combination when you have people like that who are into your wines. So you can find our wines everywhere in the US basically, in most places.

Laurie Forster (34:25)
Love that. ⁓

Yes, perfect.

know people are going to be inspired to want to get out there and try these vintages, but hopefully they can find older vintages.

Marc Hochar (34:37)
but if anybody wants to reach out by email on our website, we'll then figure out where they live and what type of retailer close to them could have our wine. So it's really easy. Just reach out to us and then we'll take it from there.

Laurie Forster (34:52)
So Jeune red, younger drinking, right? Why not a screw cap? Why a cork and not a screw cap?

Marc Hochar (34:55)
Yes, it's

a good question. We so we put and that probably covers what you asked me earlier. How much we produce? We produce 600,000 bottles in total, which is not small, but also not big. The winery was built in the fifties, late fifties, early sixties. And so it wasn't planned for such a huge expansion.

Laurie Forster (35:11)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (35:19)
we only have space for one bottling line and so we can't have both and even the numbers don't justify having both a screw cap and cork. But to be honest, we prefer cork. It's a natural product. It's not perfect, but at least it's something we know. Would we have put the jean in the screw cap if there was no issue of space and finances and...

Maybe, but I find that having the charm of opening a bottle and hearing the pop is part of the wine experience. And although it might be easier, more practical, more pragmatic to have screw caps, for me, it's part of life when you actually take your opener and then open a bottle. I mean, it's like if I totally imagine you were opening a bottle of champagne and there was no pop.

Laurie Forster (35:58)
I agree.

Marc Hochar (36:04)
Now know that some somebody is like to really not hear the pop of the champagne, but for me it's part of the experience and that's what we also have, I guess, even with our younger wines.

Laurie Forster (36:04)
Right.

Wow. Well, I have a question for you. There seem to be, least here in the US, there's a lot of myths about wine that just aren't true. Like you have to, you know, has to be expensive to be good. You have to have red wine with red meat, which you've already dispelled with your Chateau Musar and steak suggestion for us. But

Marc Hochar (36:16)
Yeah, great.

Laurie Forster (36:35)
Is there anything that you kind of hear when you're out and about visiting the US, Europe, wherever you're in the markets, that wine myth that you would like to dispel?

Marc Hochar (36:45)
Well, there are lots. ⁓ I'll start maybe with one. The first one is that the more you know about wine, and anybody who's starting to maybe study wine or even just be curious about learning about wine, realizes that the more you know, the less you know. So it's just endless. That's the first part. And the second part, I think, is that...

Laurie Forster (36:47)
Okay.

Marc Hochar (37:05)
When you meet somebody who says who knows everything, then you know.

that maybe that person may have studied, may have had a lot of experience, but it doesn't mean that necessarily his experience is the one that you will have as a taster. So I tend to say that a good wine is not necessarily an expensive wine, and it's not necessarily a wine that is recommended by somebody who's necessarily more professional, because what he might like is not what you would like as a taster. Now, they might guide you in terms of

the varietals, understanding what's in it so that you then understand what you like and then eventually you learn more and eventually also your taste changes. And then you could move from a style of wine, a style of varietals to something else as you go through five years, 10 years, 15 years of wine experience. So I guess the comment I want to make when I'm saying all of this is that...

Laurie Forster (37:43)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Hochar (37:54)
Believe in what you like, what you think. Maybe hear what people outside of, know, in front of you have to say, but in the end it's your own palate that decides. And then you go through your own journey of wine discovery. And like you go through university, like school, or meeting people, it's the same. It's the same with wine. It's a living thing and it changes all the time and it adapts to who you are as a living person as well.

Laurie Forster (38:17)
I often say when I'm doing events or any kind of wine education that it's about trusting your own tastes. And that's basically what you're saying. this has been amazing. And I know people are really gonna be excited to hear all about your winery and get out there and try the wines. Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Marc Hochar (38:34)
It's really a pleasure, Laurie. Thank you very much for having me and for a fantastic conversation. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you.

Laurie Forster (38:38)
Thank you, cheers.

Laurie Forster (38:40)
I hope you enjoyed listening and learning about Chateau Musar in Lebanon, this iconic winery natural from the start. Definitely check out their website, Chateau Musar. I'll post a link on the show page and look for their wines in your market. You can get them through Broadbent Selections. That's the importer. Anyway, as a reminder, go to thewinecoach.com slash events and get all the information about my virtual wine tasting next week.

as well as the information session about my tour, Treasures of Tuscany, on Sunday, September 28th. I hope you'll join me. And until next week, cheers.