Bekaa Valley Icon · Vineyard Wine
Bekaa Valley Wine (Ksara)
Photo: Chateau Ksara / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
In 1898, orphan boys working the estate stumbled into a Roman-era cave while trying to smoke a fox out of the henhouse it had been raiding — the tunnels turned out to run two kilometers underground, and the winery has aged its bottles there ever since.
Grapes grown at roughly 1,000 meters elevation across the Bekaa Valley are pressed and fermented into red, white, and rosé wines, many aged in a two-kilometer network of Roman-era limestone caves outside Zahle. Cellar-door tastings and vineyard-side stands sell bottles straight from the source.
Why it's made this way: Founded by Jesuit priests in 1857, the valley's oldest winery grew alongside the Bekaa's long grape-growing tradition and turned this fertile, high-altitude valley into Lebanon's wine country.
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