Domaine des Tourelles Lebanon Mixed Reds

Tasting notes & discussion 11

Typically $36/bottle from Domaine des Tourelles
Vintage 2023 from Western Bekaa
Available for AL; AZ; AR; CA; CO; CT; DC; FL; GA; ID; IL; IN; IA; KS; KY; LA; ME; MD; MA; MI; MN; MO; MT; NE; NV; NH; NJ; NM; NY; NC; ND; OH; OK; OR; PA; RI; SC; SD; TN; TX; VT; VA; WA; WV; WI; WY
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About Domaine des Tourelles: “François-Eugène Brun, who came from France, fell in love with this area of the Bekaa Valley where he set up the first winery in Lebanon in 1868.”

Planted Instead Of Passing Through

TASTING NOTES:
Domaine des Tourelles Vieilles Vignes Cinsault - “Fermenting the wines in concrete tanks using wild yeasts and nothing else to offer the purest expression of that grape.”

Domaine des Tourelles Vieilles Vignes Carignan - “This wine is high in acidity with balanced tannins. The vinification and aging in concrete vats ensure that it can be drunk reasonably young. Along with the dominant flavors of cranberries and raspberries there are strong notes of licorice and Mediterranean spices.” (AbV 14%)

VINEYARD: Vines Above 50 years… Clay with some limestone soils.

PAIRS WITH: A wine that goes well with rich poultry (turkey or duck). It has also the rich structure to be enjoyed with red meat.

THAT REMINDS ME OF: The Beirut-Damascus road, the construction project that first brought François-Eugène Brun to the Bekaa Valley in the 1860s.

There’s a certain category of person throughout history who gets sent somewhere to do one thing and ends up doing something else entirely. Brun came to Lebanon to help build a road. He looked around at the Bekaa Valley — that long, flat, sun-drenched corridor between two mountain ranges, sitting more than a kilometer above sea level — and thought: I’m going to make wine here instead. The road, presumably, got built anyway. Someone else handled it.

The Beirut-Damascus road itself has one of those histories that reads like a compressed version of the whole region’s story. The Ottoman Empire commissioned it. The French built stretches of it. It became a railway, then a highway, then a frontline, then a trade route again. People have been moving goods, armies, and ideas across that corridor for millennia — the Bekaa Valley sits on one of the oldest overland connections between the Mediterranean coast and the ancient cities of the interior. Brun showed up as one small chapter in that enormous story and decided the most interesting thing he could do was stop moving and plant something.

Which, honestly, tracks. Roads are about getting somewhere else. Vineyards are about staying put long enough to understand where you already are.

Who's buying this?

How are you buying your bottles?

Brun came to build a road and ended up planting vines instead. How do you tend to operate?

I follow the original plan — detours cost time and someone has to finish the road

I follow the original plan — detours cost time and someone has to finish the road
I follow my instincts when something better reveals itself along the way

I follow my instincts when something better reveals itself along the way
I start with a plan but I'm quietly hoping something derails it

I start with a plan but I'm quietly hoping something derails it
I never really had a plan — I just stop where the light looks good

I never really had a plan — I just stop where the light looks good
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