Exclusive: Michael Karam’s 2023 Lebanon report

By Harpers Editorial

Published: 13 January, 2023

In a Harpers exclusive, Lebanese authority Michael Karam has released his 2023 Lebanon report, available to read for free on the Harpers website.

With his unparalleled knowledge of his homeland, its wines and winemakers, Karam dissects the current landscape of the Lebanese wine industry and how it got there.

The country, a small mountainous nation of four million people, is once again in a state of turmoil, on the constant verge of economic and social collapse.

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Summarising the state affairs Karam said, "As multiple calamities – hyperinflation; infrastructure failure; shortages of essential commodities and a massive explosion that devastated a swathe of East Beirut and traumatised a nation (not to mention Covid) – buffeted the sector, hampering production and choking what logistics channels were left open, this drove wine producers to delve deep into the crisis-management handbook."

Without belittling the trials and tribulations faced by other winemaking countries, it is something of a miracle that wine is produced in Lebanon at all, making this report a must-read for all in the indsutry.

By global standards, the wine production in Lebanon is ridiculously small – 11 million bottles from 60-odd producers. However, the nation’s modest stock is really beginning to outshine some of its wealthier competitors, heralded by a new generation of winemakers with a penchant for modern styles, often with ingenious grapes.

Karam’s full, in-depth and up-to-the-minute Lebanon 2023 report on the industry, its producers and its wines, is now available to read for free, exclusively here.

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