Serge Hochar, Winemaker At Chateau Musar, Has Died In An Accident
Serge Hochar, winemaker at Château Musar and a pioneering force for Lebanon’s wine industry, has died in a swimming accident on holiday in Mexico aged 72.
Image Source: The Drinks Business.
After studying under the famous oenologist Emile Peynaud in Bordeaux, Serge took over his father’s winery in 1959 and spent the next 18 years developing the highly distinctive, often divisive but certainly long-lived Musar wine style.
When Lebanon descended into Civil War between 1975 and 1990, Serge famously continued transporting his grapes through army checkpoints on the long drive from Musar’s vineyards in the Bekaa Valley to the family winery just north of Beirut.
As the ongoing conflict saw his domestic market dry up, Serge looked further afield. His big break came in 1979 at the UK’s Bristol Wine Fair, when wine writer Michael Broadbent declared Musar 1967 red his “find of the fair”. By the end of the war, the vast majority of Musar’s production was being exported across the UK, Europe and US.
Today Serge’s son Gaston Hochar looks after the day to day running of the family business, while his nephew Ralph Hochar is based at the company’s UK office.
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