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The MEMERI Economic Weblog – 12/10/2007
Wines from the Arab planet are enduring anything of a renaissance, with creation and turnover increasing and high quality frequently increasing – in spite of opposition from Islamic conservatives. “There are a few things favorable to wine intake: funds, democracy and peace. Even if the Arab planet isn’t going to normally have all a few, situations are bit by bit but definitely becoming far more favorable in the area,” French wine skilled Denis Dubourdieu told AFP.
After a extended eclipse thanks to nationalizations, war and the European ban on “blended” wines, the viniculture is now in comprehensive bloom in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and before long in Syria.
These international locations have eighty,000 hectares underneath vines, generating one.3 million hectoliters – which interprets to 146 million bottles.
And with a turnover of $340 million and almost fifty,000 people today specifically or indirectly utilized in the sector, prospective customers are searching rosy.
The director common of one particular of Egypt’s greatest wine-makers, Lebanese Andre Hadji-Thomas, smiles as he remembers his 1998 go to to the Gianaclis estate, put up for sale 30 several years following its nationalization by then-President Gamal Abdel-Nasser: “After uncorking a bottle, the Egyptian wine-maker of the estate revealed to us that, in spite of 20 several years in the occupation, as a great Muslim he had hardly ever touched a drop of wine!”
Not astonishingly this epoch of Egyptian wine-producing was dubbed “Chateau Migraine.” In the earlier seven several years, Egypt has doubled its creation to a overall nowadays of 8.five million bottles, a few-quarters of which is drunk by vacationers. “If the solution carries on to strengthen, and tourism retains booming, we will double creation in the future 5 several years,” Hadji-Thomas predicts.
In Syria, the nationalizations of the nineteen sixties similarly undermined wine creation. But just lately one particular businessman, Johnny Saade, planted a vast estate close to the port of Latakia which will get started generating wines in two several years time. And in Homs, it is a Dutch priest who oversees creation.
In Lebanon, fifteen several years of Civil War hindered the field, but now the nation has 18 vineyards, in comparison with a few in 1990, when the conflict finished.
“Offered the intensity of the opposition, our producers are banking on excellence, and our wines win awards globally,” suggests Charles Ghostine, the chief government of the Ksara vineyard, now celebrating its a hundred and fiftieth birthday.
This would seem to have been a wise choice: With an output of just seven million bottles, turnover in 2007 was up by 10 % at $27 million, and exports stand at 40 %.
War also afflicted pedigree-wine creation in Jordan. After the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, and with it the decline of two Christian monastic orders at Cremisian and Latroun whose vines were tended to by Salesian and Trappist monks, new vineyards had to be established up north of Amman.
Their two,000 hectoliters of Eagle and Zumot wines then discovered an unforeseen market place in the 1990s, as the Iraqis tried using to get close to the worldwide embargo. Today, the Saint George manufacturer nonetheless finds consumers amid the Gulf monarchies, wherever wine is formally banned.
In the Maghreb, decolonization and the then-European Community’s ban on blended wines at the finish of the nineteen fifties dealt a lethal blow to wine creation, notably in Algeria, which was at the time the world’s fourth-greatest wine producer, at 18 million hectoliters.
These times, the Oran Province in Algeria, the Nabeul area of Tunisia and that of Meknes in Morocco generate the bulk of Arab wine – with thirteen million hectares and close to fifteen “appellations controlees” (a selected high quality mark), of which 20 % are exported to Europe.
“It is critical to struggle towards the prejudices that encompass Arab wines. Too a lot of people today nonetheless feel it is like in colonial times when tankers comprehensive of combined wines sailed across the Mediterranean to top up European wines,” suggests Jean-Pierre Dehut, export director with Morocco’s greatest wine producer, Cellars of Meknes.
This new gusto for wine alarms Islamists. In Morocco, their parliamentarians have proposed major taxes on alcoholic beverages and in Egypt, every single yr the Muslim Brotherhood put ahead proposals to ban wine… in vain.
The Each day Star, Lebanon, December seven, 2007
