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(upbeat music)
(rockets firing)
(explosion)
(guns firing)
(soldiers running)
(tank firing)
(explosion)
- Serge, I'd like to just take you back to the beginning,
to the beginning of the- - Ah!
You should remember one thing.
I want you to speak slowly, clearly
in order to allow my brain to get the real sense
of what you are intending to get from me.
- Okay. - Got it?
- Got it. - Okay, good.
- Serge, when you remember your childhood.
- Yeah, I told you, you have to speak loudly
because I don't hear
but I want you to speak slowly and loudly on purpose.
I am pushing you, I'm squeezing you, I'm cornering you
you know why?
Because by cornering you, I can abuse your brain my way.
Okay? Okay.
- What do you think shaped you
in your formative years?
- You know,
your character is shaped every day
by any thing which happens to you.
When I was seven,
I asked my parents, "Why
did you give me birth without my permission?
You did not ask me to come."
They answered, "Serge, we did not know it would be you."
So this is how I discovered that I was forced to live
against my will and this has been going on for 75 years.
(dramatic music)
Wine does not care about war or no war,
because yeast makes the wine even if people are fighting.
What is older, the wine or humanity?
Because the fruit was there,
the juice was there.
If the juice should leak on the ground,
it will ferment and it will become wine.
So wine made itself before humans.
When humanity started understanding wine
instead of being nomads, where they would take their sheep
and they would have their wheat
and they would move to another place,
wine forced them to settle.
This is why we started civilization.
(stirring string music)
- For us, today, this is a major discovery
because this is the first built wine press
and the first built treading floor that we know of.
- It's a winery, it's a winery.
I'm impressed not by that they were making wine
but by the quality of the vat.
- Exactly, exactly. - Unbelievable, unbelievable.
- What is also interesting is that
in the two shipwrecks that they found
off the shore of Ashkelon.
- Yes, yes, yes. - Some years ago.
They found them, they were filled with amphorae
of the 7th century BC.
They contained wine
and the amphorae were Phoenician amphorae
and they presumed that they were taking wine
from here to Egypt and they were shipwrecked.
- This just means that they have reached
a certain technique and a certain...
a sophisticated wine making technique.
- Here we have for the first time
a huge platform. - A big vat.
This is work. - This is work.
This is industry.
- Yeah, so this is quite...
- Impressive. - Yeah.
- This is a magnificent piece of art
and this is clear evidence that they had the know how.
The product that is made from this vat
is extremely important for us.
What they had as resources and what we have now
they still had many things in advance.
(music)
(sound of waves)
- We still need to uncover,
to investigate archeological sites in Lebanon
because there has been hardly any regular
scientific archeological work since
the beginning of the Lebanese War in 1975.
Now during the war because of its location,
in front of the sea this was a very nice area.
When we came we saw that there have been
several trenches, man made trenches
by militias, by people who were trying to loot the site
and all they hit were earth and pebbles.
So they abandoned the site and this is how
the site was preserved for us to come
and start regular excavations.
(soft music)
- Ever since I started, my first excavation was in Lebanon...
we have been under the gun, as it were.
(pensive music)
Our site was located south of Sidon
where there was a major Palestinian camp,
so we were about five kilometers away.
You might think, "Oh, well, you know
this is going to be beautiful", right?
The sun's coming up, it was a beautiful Mediterranean day
every day, though, we would have an attack by F-15 jets,
from the Israeli Air Force base, called Ramat David.
Well, the place we had lived in, in Israel was Ramat David.
That was-It's right next to the main air force base
and every night when we lived there the previous year,
we would hear the jets taking off to hit Lebanon,
and the Palestinian camp and then now
here I was on the other side of the border
watching dogfights up in the sky
and planes even coming down and
you could see the bombs dropping down on the Palestinian camp
and just huge explosions and then they would shoot out
over the Mediterranean and be gone.
And then you hear the ambulances.
Well, what was so sad, really
was that the ambulances would get into the camp
maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes after the attack
and they were pulling out the bodies, which you'd see
in the front page of the Beirut paper the next day.
This was never reported in the West, by the way
and then as the ambulances were pulling the injured out,
the F-15s would make a second strike.
(airplane flying overhead) (missiles firing, exploding)
So they were coming out just when the ambulances
were taking the injured away, and that always
really affected me, but the most...
awful experience I suppose I had was my wife was up
in Turkey the whole time, living in a Turkish village
and she came down on the day of the largest attack
that I'd ever seen.
Well, she didn't know what to do, so she ran out
onto the ancient pier that runs out to the castle
there in Sidon, and she was alongside Palestinians
with machine guns as the planes came shooting over
at about 20 feet above her head,
so she could look eye to eye into the eyes of an Israeli
pilot as they came in, and then the Palestinian
had his machine gun out, trying to knock down this plane
that's going pretty fast.
Despite these attacks I described in the south,
it's an absolutely amazing site.
So it was a sad thing when the civil war came.
There's a lot left to learn about Lebanon
as I have already mentioned because of the civil war
and the problems associated with working in Lebanon
as an archeologist,
relatively few excavations have been carried out
in the last 20 or 30 years.
I had great affection for Lebanon because
they're entrepreneurial, certainly,
competitive, but also...
a wonderful place to be because
the people are extremely friendly
and, they have such good food.
All the surrounding countries, we have
multiple excavations going on, but nothing quite
as extraordinary, I don't think as the Lebanese coast.
There has always been war, right
in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon
which is at the crossroads of so much.
This is just a continuation of what's been going on forever
and they've been producing wine there forever.
When humans first came out of Africa
about a million years ago
the first place they would have seen
the grape is Lebanon.
They would have been fascinated by vines growing all the way up
the tall cedar of Lebanon trees.
They would see the grapes
climbing their way right to the sky
you know, almost to heaven
and they must've been absolutely amazed at this fruit
but this grape happens to be ideal for making wine
because once you squash the grape and get the juice out
you've got the perfect medium for the yeast
that are living on the outside of this high sugar fruit
to get active and make wine.
So it wouldn't have been hard for the early humans,
our ancestors coming out of Africa
to figure out how to make wine.
(flute and guitar music)
And I think this was a very large motivator
to humans having year round settlements
and once you've got year round settlements,
then you're gonna get increasingly more
complex societies developing.
So I see that this fermented beverage is really contributing
greatly to the rise of permanent cultures
in settlements that then lead on
into more advanced civilization.
(stirring string and accordion music)
Around 3000 BC, when we get our first
literary records of the Canaanites,
and when we really see that the Canaanites,
who are based in the Levant in Lebanon,
are very active in wine making.
The Canaanite merchants could be real entrepreneurs.
I mean, they could come in and show off
their wares and entice the local rulers
with this new beverage
and they're the first wine merchants.
By the time we get down to the Egyptians
of around 3100 BC, we have wine being imported into Egypt
from the Canaanite territories.
And the Canaanites were experts in wine making already,
so it was quite logical to import the wine at first
and so the king, one of the first kings of Egypt
Scorpion I, he brought in 700 very large amphorae
or jars of wine and in fact, the amphora itself
was invented by the Canaanites
and it's often called the Canaanite jar.
Wine is a poetic product, you could say
it has all the different flavors and aromas
that you associate with memories
and it opens up your mind to other possibilities
it's a mind-altering substance, so...
A lot of what we are as humans
is trying to take our minds
and wrap it around all the mysteries
that exist in the universe.
The Canaanite wine was "drunk day and night"
the "fine wine of the Canaanites",
and especially the gods were very involved in this,
so they often overindulged a bit and so we have textual evidence
that sometimes they went home, rather sick, you could say
and we have very vivid accounts of their drunkenness.
Drunkenness is a way to make contact
with the gods and with the ancestors.
(upbeat Middle Eastern music)
Coming back to a place that has gone through war
was a real experience.
Every weekend we would go to Beirut,
have parties on the rooftops
and the people were very friendly.
So I think of the Lebanese today as very much
like the Lebanese of antiquity.
It carries on, I think, a lot of the traditions
that have been there for many millennia.
(dramatic music)
If Lebanon wasn't in a constant state of war
we might be able to get a lot more information
about these early periods.
The site of Baalbek was set up by Antoninus Pius,
who came from Carthage.
Even though he's a Roman emperor, he had his roots
in the Phoenician colony of Carthage
so he probably would have worshipped Bacchus too.
The temple to Bacchus is
probably one of the best preserved
classical buildings anywhere and it has beautiful
grapevine motifs and some poppy
or opium type motifs.
- Bacchus was the god of wine.
During the survey, in the western part of Baalbek
we find a lot of wine presses but we didn't find
a lot of material for exportation
which means wine was used by locals.
Because we didn't find the amphora jars for exportation.
But in fact, we know that according to some mythology,
according to some legends that it was very special,
this party in Baalbek.
Wine is part of the ceremony.
- The first commercial wine came from Lebanon.
This is where the Romans put their god,
where they get the best results
and that's what would happen
they put Bacchus in the Bekaa, it's not me who is saying it
it's the great Roman Empire, who did make wine all
over the world, the Old World,
and they chose to put Bacchus in the temple of Baalbek.
The great civilizations that say, this is the region
where you can plant grapes,
this is the Bordeaux of the Old World.
- The Romans liked to take their gods into the furthest corner
of their empire and the Bekaa Valley
was an agricultural area
in which the cult of Bacchus
that revolved around the seasonal cycle
of planting and harvesting and resurrection
was very powerful.
- People in this period, the Pagan Period,
they believed more about the power of wine and gods.
(pensive music)
(music continues) (muffled, echoing hammer blows)
When we heard the first time about Daesh and ISIS
and the problem and what they did,
the aggressivity behind something like Palmyra.
(eerie music)
(explosion)
I'm afraid because they can do the same here.
I think we are lucky.
(eerie music)
(light music)
- The first thing you will understand in the Bacchus temple
that it was a temple for weed, wine and sex
and that was happening 2,000 years ago.
The beautiful terroir of Baalbek is at 1,000 meters altitude,
where we decided to plant
Grenache Noir and Grenache Blanc
just in front of cannabis.
I think it's still too far for Lebanon to take that decision
in legalizing the weed because I was called by this region
to advise them in order to plant grapes
instead of cannabis.
People decided to try some crops other than the cannabis
because cannabis was always a risky crop in that area.
If I wasn't from the Bekaa Valley
and if I wasn't with these genes,
if I call them genes of the war,
I would never accept to do such a project in that area
in Baalbek, which is known for its dangerous reputation.
And with a bit of luck, because we are lucky people
although we are in the middle of a war zone,
we are lucky people to have this beautiful nature
that gives us so much potential in growing vines,
producing wines and telling the story.
(light music)
- Lebanon has been a country of refuge
than a country of population.
Lebanon's population has been constituted by refugees
since the inception of Lebanon.
We are a combination of population from the whole world,
from the whole religions
I usually tell, okay, in the States you are a melting pot
but you are the last melting pot.
In Lebanon, we are the first melting pot of humanity,
and this is why in Lebanon, even with the situation we have
we are accepting the millions of Syrians coming to Lebanon.
So this is why to say, Lebanon is not a country
it's the country of the whole world.
(birds squawking)
- Dad would say, "Look at the ruby color
isn't that beautiful?"
The situation in Lebanon today is very hard,
with a...
next war situation, or call it whatever,
but I don't look at it that way.
My only conviction is to my family.
My father was a general in the Lebanese Army
and I looked up at him like my hero, my hero.
At the age of 11, he put a gun in my hands
and he said, "It's gonna...
send you back a little but you try to stay as firm as you can
and you shoot in the middle.
It's like if you are shooting somebody
between the eyes, you got it?"
I said, "Yes, Dad, I'm gonna do my best."
I enjoyed it actually.
It's a terrible thing to tell a child of 11 to do that
but he meant it.
To have his daughters be strong
and up to any situation life would bring you along.
He prepared us, actually
it has always been part of my life, wine and war.
We are four sisters and I was the one who liked best
to be next to him and to enjoy making wine.
And that was a dream of his which came true.
I loved the idea of him starting a winery
and he didn't need to be encouraged
he was so passionate about everything he did
well, sad enough, he left us...
and since then I took it upon myself to continue his heritage.
I'm very proud of having a dad like this
and for me to carry on his legacy
wasn't an easy thing.
I don't know whether to say that a woman in a man's world
is an easy task, but it was worth trying.
- Today, if you were to name one
winery in the region or in the near region
that is really having to fight
to get its wines made
it has got to be Domaine de Bargylus in Syria.
The owners had a wonderful vision
about making a Syrian wine
and even getting praise from the likes of Jancis Robinson
who says Domaine de Bargylus is arguably
the best red wine in the Eastern Mediterranean today
and this wine is being made in a civil war!
How does that work?
(tanks rumbling)
- We've inherited a region of instability.
Back in 2003, when we decided to plant the first vines
in Syria and almost at the same time in Lebanon.
We loved the idea that being from Syria and Lebanon
we could actually do wine in both countries
because let's not forget that doing wine
and planting a vineyard is also a statement
of implanting yourself on a very long term.
When you plant a vine, I think you're saying
I'm here to stay.
(dramatic music)
When the war started in Syria, there was a moment
of questioning whether we could be able to continue
producing there, and what we did later on is adapt...
(explosion)
because the most important thing for us was to continue
producing high quality wine and also keeping
the people who worked for us in the winery
because around them everybody left.
One day we get a call from our engineer in Syria
and he tells us that people are fighting
just 500 meters away from the winery.
That moment was really putting in question everything.
We didn't know if we've lost the whole installations
the winery, the vineyard and also the people
who worked for us, we had about three or four hours
where we didn't have any contact.
Everything could have happened.
It's been at least five years
that we haven't been going to Syria, to our winery.
We are producing wine without going there
and it's critical to taste the grapes
before we determine the dates of the harvest
and what we do is we ship by taxi the little grapes
and we taste them here in this conference room.
And this involves a lot of time and a lot of challenges
and we're doing wine when all odds are against us.
So all is managed over the phone and through contacts
and communications and this is even more difficult.
It's almost impossible.
When we turn off the lights, hoping
that the next day wouldn't be worse than this one
it's relatively a good thing.
- It's not normal, that we suffer in Lebanon
of whatever happens in the area.
Why is it Lebanon?
Because we are small, because we are more open,
because we have the sympathy
of all countries to interfere in our internal affairs
I don't know, the mosaic of communities
certainly is a factor.
We have a lot of Christian communities.
Shia, Sunni, Druze
Alawites, et cetera.
Our strength is this multitude of communities
because when it works, it works so well.
Sometimes it doesn't work and you know how the medias are
they always emphasize on trouble, on problems
and they don't talk of the beautiful aspect of life.
I would assure you that I don't know one foreigner
regardless of his nationality, who didn't come to Lebanon
and who didn't fall in love with our country.
A country with such a high civilization,
with a lot of culture, with a lot of history,
with a wonderful climate and our duty as wine producers,
as business people, as people who believe in Lebanon
is to change this idea people have about Lebanon.
We are sure one day peace will prevail
and Lebanon will regain its importance
in the Middle East, not to say in the whole world.
(soft music)
- We are an area that has been invaded over
2,500 years by all types of invaders
and that changed the culture.
When today we talk about our wine,
people's first impression is they're surprised.
"Don't you have war?"
We say, "Yeah, we had war."
But one has to be realistic, you know?
You'd better be careful of what you do
or where you go or follow news...
But anything can happen, we are living on a volcano.
- We live in a part of the world that has been invaded
and conquered and fought over continuously
from the Crusaders to the Mamluks
to the Ottoman Empire, to the French,
to the Lebanese civil war, to Israeli conflicts,
post civil war and now we've even got ISIS
knocking on our front door.
We live in a bad neighborhood, we live in a neighborhood
with Israel to the south, we've now got a war-torn Syria
to our east and even within our own society
there's a lot of conflict, there's a lot of tension,
there's a lot of friction.
And staying with this, I think
one of the most remarkable stories
in the history of the Lebanese wine industry
has got to be the story of Serge Hochar
who is arguably one of the famous winemakers
of his generation.
Not only did he put Lebanon's flag on the world wine map,
he made a remarkable wine.
One of the most remarkable wines you're ever likely
to taste, be it the red or the white.
And he had an intrinsic understanding between wine
and humanity and in that respect, he was a guru
I mean, Serge was a war hero in the respect that
he was picking his grapes under the guns of every militia
in the world: there were the Syrians, there were the Israelis
there were the Palestinians, There was the Baader Meinhof
there was the Japanese Red Army.
When people opened a bottle in London or in New York
or in Tokyo, they were uncorking conflict
there was a whiff of war in every bottle of wine
that they opened, Serge was a magician on so many fronts,
and Lebanon had a giant.
- If you are a "fear person"
if you have fear, you are a dead person.
My father had no clue about wine
and he started the winery.
My father wanted me to be in the winery, I did not want.
I wanted to be a monk in the mountains.
Yeah.
I wanted to be on my own.
Do nothing.
My father forced me and because I was the eldest
in the family, I had to accept the responsibility.
And when I came to the winery,
for the harvest, the first day the truck arrived
I tasted the juice, it was good, I did taste it.
Two days later, it started to be sparkling,
it started to have bubbles into it,
so I was wondering what it was.
I understood that this was the miracle of the wine,
the miracle of life.
This is why I became a believer in life.
Okay?
Being a believer, doesn't mean you are religious.
(bells ringing)
- When I came back from making wine in Palestine and Israel,
I was convinced that wine was a good substance.
We should learn about it, love it and drink it.
If it is abused in order to get drunk,
then it can be used for war.
But if wine is used as an essence of nature to be happy,
it becomes a product for peace and not war.
Since the 1960's, the Lebanese church wanted
the Trappist monks to become established in Lebanon.
We never responded to their request
until the civil war started.
When I came to Lebanon,
I introduced myself to the Patriarch Khreich
who asked me a question...
"We have been asking you to come for a long time
why have you just come now in the midst of war?
You won't get out of here alive.
Why couldn't you have come when there was peace?"
There was something more than shells
and destruction that brought me here.
God asked me to sow peace in Lebanon.
So I took action, and that's
when I decided to be a symbol of unity in the country.
- Day by day, Israeli war planes
have bombed the Palestinian quarter of Beirut.
Visions of fear and destruction from the heavens
a justice that seems less than divine.
- In the beginning, none of us
thought that it would last so long.
Of course, we were optimistic, saying that fine
it's part of the conflicts that are part
of the political life of this country
but no one thought that it would come to a point
where we would be unable to reach even
where the winery and fields were.
The communities amongst themselves
did not used to hate each other, this happened out of the blue.
When the tribes that live in the Bekaa Valley
started taking active part in the conflict
it became, unfortunately, a kind of ethnic
religious war and very soon
there was no more anything
which could be called a country.
It was in the mountains of Sofar
and those militias surrounded my car.
"What are you doing here", I said, "It's the end of the month
and I have to pay the wages of the people."
They said, "Are you going to think that we will believe
that you can expose yourself to such danger
and go to pay the people and their wages?
Then, obviously you are a spy."
Of course, the sentence was death.
They entrusted me to the care of one of them.
I had to go with him because he had his gun in my back.
By that time we arrived at the place where
he decided to shoot me.
I was very calm, I don't know why.
But I was expecting the
(makes gun firing sound) (laughs)
to shoot me,
and it seems, well, my time had not yet come.
Someone came out of the tent, which they had there
and it happened to be the man from whom
we had rented our house in Sofar
and he knew that I was a friend of a certain
Kamal Jumblatt,
who was a very important man of their community
and he said, "What are you doing?
This man is very important, he's the very close friend of
Kamal Jumblatt,
and you will have to pay for it."
He said, "Okay, okay, let him go."
They kept the car but they let me go.
- Once a war starts, you must understand
that it can last for 20 years
so you have to plan, today
all the future of the winery
keeping in mind that it will take 20 years.
This is how I understood that Lebanon is a country
which is always
in a situation of unrest, peace, unrest, peace
but once you have unrest, it can last for long.
My philosophy was to look for markets outside Lebanon
because in 1975, our sales in Lebanon dropped by 90%.
The characteristic in the genes of Lebanese people
has been to fight for survival
elsewhere from their country.
And I started tasting the world
and this is when I came back to Lebanon
and I understood that Lebanon was a little bit different
from the rest of the world.
So I decided to continue myself making wine
until the day war will finish and I will see what I'll do.
- The horizon was very cloudy in Lebanon.
It wasn't easy, it was very costly.
We sat, we discussed it together and said, "Look...
What are the options?"
No risk-taking
or why not play the game? As both ourselves were of the
same character, "Why not, let's do it." We took the risk
to do it and that's why the story started.
- In 1975, Serge and his brother went for broke
and like the Lebanese have done for thousands of years
they packed their bags and they took their wares abroad,
and they went to London,
and were carrying their wines around in suitcases
going from door to door, trying to sell these
crazy wines from a crazy country that no one
really knew about and that was the gamble.
- It was an appalling war
and Serge continued making wine
as if nothing had happened and I wrote about it.
I was actually credited with discovering the wine.
A chap came to our stand and said
"You really must come right away
there are some wines which I think you must, must taste."
And I'd never tasted any wine like it before
it was so distinctive,
and it was not Bordeaux, it was not Burgundy
it was not trying to be anything.
- The paradoxical aspect is the contrast between
a wine of this quality, the man and his philosophy
coming from the country which was, unfortunately
described, as a third world country.
Unknown.
The press coverage wasn't so favorable
and so on, you know, "What are you doing here
coming from Lebanon?"
Refugees, between quotes.
Refugees? We are not refugees.
We're adventurers!
(chuckling)
We're not refugees.
- In the 70's, 80's, Lebanon was being talked about
because of war, not anything else.
And at the time my father traveling the world
would be an ambassador because he would talk about
the history of the country, about the culture
of the country, about the wines of the country
and so it was showing an image of Lebanon
which was something completely different than
what people were used to seeing on the news and on TV.
Phoenicians were traders, they were not conquerors
they were conquering by trade and not conquering
by weapons and arms.
We are, today, showing our products
by touring the world, proposing them
like Phoenicians used to showcase them
around the Mediterranean 5,000 years ago.
- One day, I was in Beirut and the Syrians were shelling
heavily Achrafieh
so in my building, the people went to the shelter
they called me and I said, "No, I will not go to the shelter.
I'll stay in my room."
I went to my cellar, I discovered the bottle of 1972.
I had a very big glass of Baccarat, which takes
one liter and a half, so I took my bottle of '72
decanted all of it in this glass.
The glass was half full
and I took it to my room, sat on my bed
and each time there was a shell, I would take a sip.
I did not want to go out.
So this is how I discovered that once you taste
you use one thing
you use your brain.
The ability of your brain to taste
depends on the conditions in which you are.
If you have shells coming on your head
you taste but you are affected by shells.
So this, in one way, made that the wine was different
in the situation in which I was.
(sound of shells exploding)
So I understood that your interpretation of the wine
depends on your identity, on your soul, on your body.
This is how you learn to taste life slowly.
The last drop made me have a tear.
(phone ringing)
At night time, my friend called me,
"Serge, we need a partner for our bridge play.
So, okay, could you come down?"
I told them, "Okay, I'll come down."
So I went out of my room and I look
all the windows of the house were shattered.
All the windows, the only room which was not touched
was the room where I was spending my day.
And a neighbor of ours, a friend of mine,
was in her room, there was a bomb on their house.
One shrapnel went through
the ceiling and came down directly into her heart.
One shrapnel had come into her heart and she passed away.
So basically, so this is how I spent this day
and the wine I was tasting this day was a 1972.
Just to tell you something, for me, war or no war
I don't care because grape, yeast
does not care about war.
- The thing that I always think of about Serge
is that line of his, about how a human being encountering
a wine that is living, which is what he always spoke about.
As you know, that...
that in order for something to be great,
it had to have life in it, it didn't have to necessarily
taste good or taste bad, it was beyond that, it was about
was this made with love, was this made with life?
Does it still contain life, does it inspire you to life?
All of this was about this sense of living-ness
as opposed to being shut down and checked out.
When you come into the presence of somebody who has rejected
that formula and said, "You're not the sum of your
obligations, you're the sum of your senses,
you're the sum of your experiences,
you're the sum of your feelings,
you're the sum of your interactions with other people.
Let me show you how.
Through taste and through the art of the senses."
(dramatic music)
- Everybody told me it's not time to start a winery.
It's not the time to plant vineyards.
And they used to accompany it with a sign
on their head doing...
(chuckling)
(upbeat music)
And I never looked after what they said.
During the war in '82, I asked for an oenologist
and he was a French one.
He came without thinking about it.
He was an adventurer.
(upbeat alternative music)
- In 1982, I arrived in Lebanon.
When I arrived he told me to cut my hair
and I said, "No way...
if you don't like it I can leave."
But, as soon as I saw the vines I couldn't leave.
I thought it was impossible that grapes
like these were growing in Lebanon.
It reminded me of the Bible
where Lebanese wine is mentioned
and when I saw the vines I saw the direct connection.
The grapes were beautiful!
I used to blast Bob Marley to the max while fermenting.
To this day, people still call me "Bob".
- "I will be as the dew to Israel.
I shall grow as the lily and throw out my roots to Lebanon.
Those who dwell under my shadow shall revive
and grow as the vine.
The scent shall be as the wine of Lebanon."
In the Old Testament, Hosea wanted to convey
Lebanon's greatness through wine.
The country was considered to be one of
the first wine producers in the world.
So Lebanon's message is to propagate
wine throughout the world.
A little bit of wine makes the heart happy.
- Pour me some more. - No, you've had too much.
- Don't start with me.
I told the workers at the winery to leave
but I didn't leave until the first shells started falling.
(tanks firing)
I said, "Jesus, this place is filled with spirits.
if one shell should hit, the whole place will explode."
So I ran outside to hide.
- There was a sky battle with the Syrians.
And one or two planes fell in Kefraya.
In the vineyards.
He was running and then the passport got out of his pocket
and he was without any papers.
- So I was hiding in a pipe
I was there the whole day.
When the shelling stopped, the soldiers came to the winery.
- They arrived with their tanks.
They went into the house.
They deteriorated what they could,
then they installed their camp here just where we are.
They knew that he was there.
They asked for him and everybody said
"We don't know where he is."
So they thought, of course, that he would not be far.
- One of the tanks was going back and forth.
A soldier got out and put his flashlight
into the hole where I was hiding,
and I said to myself, "This is the end, I'm going to die."
I put my hands up and surrendered.
- They thought he was a terrorist
because he had a beard.
And they took him to Tel Aviv.
- I was transferred to 6 or 7 jails.
They tied my hands and feet and put me in a truck
and next to me was a Syrian pilot
and part of his face was gone.
When they saw his condition they gave him morphine
and he couldn't feel the pain anymore.
I was smoking a cigarette with my hands tied up
and the pilot was asking me with his eyes for a cigarette.
I pretended that I didn't see him.
I couldn't give him a smoke. What would he do with it?
Finally, an officer asked me for a phone number,
to contact someone in France to say I was in jail.
So they tell my mom.
They told her, "Your son is in prison in Israel."
Then they hung up.
They hung up on her.
When she heard I was in prison she thought
that I had become a thug and a troublemaker.
So she didn't tell anyone about it.
There were 70 of us in prison.
I tried speaking with another Frenchman and the others
would always shut me up because someone was always praying.
They would all pray constantly, one after another.
I said, "Why are you praying?
Are you afraid of being killed?
When you had guns none of you were praying
but now you are afraid for your lives, right?"
I started shouting at them
because no one would let me talk.
We were two against seventy.
I told them, "Everyone prays together, and that's it."
After that we could speak whenever we wanted.
The one who jailed us told me to "eat shit"
and now you want me to shut up?
No way! I'm not going to take it!
So I became the leader of the cell.
- Then the French consulate intervened
and they got him out, back to France
and he stayed there for just a week
and then he came back here.
I told him not to do it but he wanted to come back.
The army stayed three years and we used to look after
what they did every day.
If it was not pipes which were broken
it was the vines which were erased.
(light music)
- If you stay until tomorrow I can tell you stories.
(bottle opener rattling)
What's happening?
(bottle slamming on surface) (cork popping)
Ha!
Did you say something?
Pass me the 2011.
(playful music)
(indistinct chatter)
After that jail experience, I took down my walls.
(wine pouring)
(playful music)
- Which wine you want to taste?
- All of them
(cork popping)
(sipping)
(playful music continues)
(spitting)
(smacking lips)
(cork popping)
- When I came back to Lebanon, there was a snowball effect
and I found myself getting more and more sucked into
this funny little world that was called
the Lebanese wine industry.
(spitting)
- I want to shock you. - Okay, you should.
- I love to shock you.
You know how old I am?
- 73
- 27
27! - Okay
- I'm getting younger
this is why I'm becoming dangerous.
Good, okay, what you want to taste now?
- Let's go for the cuvÃ©e.
(cork popping)
- Let me give you an advice.
You take your glass and you put one drop on your tongue
and you leave it on your tongue, one drop.
And it goes into all your mouth
and nothing comes to your stomach.
So you have the pleasure without the effect
of drinking.
- Serge, you're too kind, thank you.
- Oh.
Because this would smell different.
- It already has smelled different.
- Yeah.
You see, when you swirl in the glass, you look
to the tears, look how much time it takes to go down.
It stays, it stays, it's impressive.
You know, Michael, I have reached an age
where love is a question of experience.
You can start loving and then it dies.
The most important, if love
you can increase it and make it better, higher
more approachable, more attractive,
so this is how I behave
even with my wine.
- In 1984, after the Israeli invasion
the road from Beirut to Damascus was closed.
The vineyards were in the buffer zone.
You know, it was...
You have the Israeli armies in the south
and the Syrian army in the north
and I think the vineyards were in between.
- In 1984, there was such a war situation
not because the grapes could not make wine
because I could not bring them to the winery.
- While I was in Beirut, our bailiff
got in touch with me at my office
five in the evening, the streets were empty.
Empty because the offices were not far from the Green Line.
He said, "Look, I'm ready.
I can send you two or three trucks." "Are you joking?"
He said, "No."
I called Serge in Paris on holiday
and said, "Serge, look, I don't want you to come
but we can start in two days." He said, "What?"
I said, "Yes, but don't come."
He called me back, said "Okay,
I'll be there in a couple of days." "For God's sake!"
He flew from Paris to Cyprus, took a speed boat
and he arrived two days later at six in the morning.
- Instead of harvesting in early September, as usual
we did harvest on the 20th of October,
which made it an impossible
product and to bring the grapes from the vineyards,
which are in Bekaa Valley to Ghazir,
which is north of Beirut...
it took us five days.
From the vineyard we had to go south Bekaa,
up to the north to Baalbek and there we took the road
to the Cedars and from the Cedars to Tripoli
and from Tripoli to Jounieh and there to the winery.
(truck engine rumbling)
- Life in 1984 wasn't easy.
All the roads were closed and bombed,
Whenever we would find an open road we would take it.
On the way back from the Cedars road, I hit a checkpoint.
I bribed them with cigarettes to
make the crossing happen as usual.
But this time the soldier was annoying
me so I threw the cigarettes at him
and then he attacked me!
So I tackled him and took his weapon.
His commander saw us and ran over
I gave him his weapon and he asked, "What happened?"
I exaggerated a little bit and told
him the soldier had offended me,
so the commander started beating him.
I can't believe I wasn't beaten too.
The commander was a good guy.
He invited me for a tea!
After that he said, "I got your back,
God be with you."
- So we found another route, we sent the grapes from Bekaa
to the south of Lebanon, go to Sidon.
In Sidon, we took a ferry boat
and which brought the truck to Jounieh
and from there, from Jounieh, it went up to the winery.
But there was a storm, so to be able to sail
it took three days more to sail
so this is what made that the grape arrived
to the winery five days after.
So... the grapes arrived to the winery already fermenting.
- All of a sudden, Serge told me
"You got the truck from the south, but what?"
I said, "Yes."
It wasn't planned.
Purely coincidence, nature, God, war.
War.
This is why I say making wine
is the biggest gamble you could think of, okay, good?
So when I'm asked, "Serge, what do you do in life?"
I do two things.
I'm a cook and I'm a gambler.
I cook for tomorrow not for today
but by making the wine for the future
and bottling it, I'm a gambler.
So I'm a cook, gambler cook.
Any decision you make on the wine,
affects the wine.
Now, although the wine makes itself
by raising it up, by giving it affection
by talking with it, it can evolve, we can make it evolve.
And this is what I say:
Wine is a permanent miracle,
and you have to believe.
(wine bottle opening)
- When I came back to Lebanon,
I was shocked by a social phenomenon
that emerged during the war.
The war was about ethnicity.
Your identity could get you killed.
I told my sister that I wanted to go to our village in Kobayet.
"No way!" she said
"You have to pass by Muslim checkpoints.
They will kill you!"
But that didn't change my mind.
Every time there was a checkpoint
I would get out of the car on purpose
so they would see I was a monk.
I arrived at the village of Hermel
and still no one had killed me.
No one had laid their hands on me.
Not even an insult.
I saw kids playing
and I asked if they could take me to the Sheikh.
"Follow us!" they said.
All the children were walking in front of me
and along the way people joined the crowd.
We walked in the narrow streets
until we arrived to the Sheikh's house.
The Skeikh was surprised to see all the villagers
in front of his door with me in the middle.
He asked, "How can I help you, Father?"
I told him, "I am here to defy you.
I came all the way from Beirut and still no one has killed me."
"So I thought why not meet you,
the big Sheikh, and test my fate."
"Why would I kill you?
On the contrary, you are most welcome!"
I stood up and went towards him.
I kissed him...
on both cheeks
and hugged him
and I said, "Love will prevail."
A toast to love and humanity.
- One of the most remarkable stories in postwar Lebanon
is Chateau Bellevue in Bhamdoun.
Here we have a story of a man who grew up in Bhamdoun,
who loved the village,
who had an intense, emotional tie with his community
who left, he took the traditional Lebanese route,
he left to study abroad like thousands of Lebanese
do every year and when he was studying
in the middle of the civil war, there was a massacre
in his village, 500 people were murdered.
I mean, that would be trauma anywhere
and what did he do?
He said, "I'm gonna heal the wounds of war through wine,"
and he planted his first vineyard in his father's hotel
that was destroyed during the war and now he's bought
vineyards all over the town as a symbol of resurrection.
(soft music)
- When you plant vines,
you plant it for your grandchild.
If you really want to uproot people, cut their vines
and that's exactly what's happening
around this part of the world.
500 people perished in this place,
In this place and in many other places, so it happened
in Christian villages, it happened in
Muslim, Druze villages,
it happened everywhere.
To me, this was it, I never wanted to come back...
at the time, you know.
Despite the fact that because we felt useless
we felt powerless, we felt like
it's so much bigger than you
how can you make a change?
When I returned the first person I wanted to help
was myself, I had hatred in me.
I had hatred against human beings.
There were no trees, my vineyard, my own vineyard
that I had planted with my grandfather
was uprooted, the olive groves were cut.
I don't have to seek justice by myself.
Justice, we seek by planting and beautifying things.
We continue doing that.
- It's good will that's guiding us.
The idea was, how can we encourage people
to reattach themselves to their own land?
The vineyards was the vehicle.
It was a vehicle that people could relate to at some level.
One of the issues that we had encouraging people
to come back and live in Bhamdoun,
because everyone had obviously made lives elsewhere -
schools, apartments, jobs, et cetera, in Beirut
most frequently, but to get them to come back
and really invest themselves here, we had to somehow
encourage their children to be interested.
It couldn't be internet, it couldn't be
things that they're used to doing, going out
and having places to go with their friends.
So a few years ago, Naji created a group of harvesters,
who were young people in high school and in college
they didn't necessarily know each other because
they were all from different parts of Beirut
but their parents had known each other.
They earned a little bit of money
they found a commonality,
they started to care about what happened
to their grandfathers' land.
So that's the generation that needed to be excited.
- And now they know every corner of the valley
and they ask us, when are we picking?
That's what we want to create here,
is people who believe in the future.
A future based on total quality environment,
where we are in communion with nature.
- All the elements are here.
People have to open their eyes and see them.
Breaking News
- Dani Chamoun, his wife and two young sons
were killed today in their apartment
by a commando team of five armed men.
An act that has sparked outrage
(bell ringing)
- I left Lebanon to discover the world
but Lebanon never really left me.
On the TV, I saw the picture of Dani, Ingrid and the boys
I grew up very close to the family.
I knew that something terrible had happened.
Dani fought for this land.
The same day I called up my mom and I said,
"I'm coming back to...
home."
(soft music)
When I returned
the first matter I had to negotiate was the land we had.
I stayed on the rooftop of our house.
Occupiers were in it living with their cattle.
They were nomads, Bedouins
and they realized at some point that I meant business.
I had an AK-47 that didn't leave me all the time
but luckily I didn't have to use it.
I wasn't aggressive at all but I had determination
so eventually they decided to pack and leave
because one of us had to leave.
Once the squatters left, I had all this land on hand
and I said, I need to make a life out of it.
There is no stronger wine than a wine made in a region where
there is war, because it's the essence of rebirth and life.
Wine is not just a mere packaging
of a bottle and a price,
it's a soul.
And the soul of life from a region of war
is nowhere stronger than when you are able
to make wine from this region.
It means, by essence, this is life I'm offering you
although there is war.
(singing in foreign language)
- Sami and Ramzi Ghosn were children of the civil war.
They were at the forefront of what I would call the...
the second generation of Lebanese wine producers,
those producers that established their wineries
after the civil war ended.
Ramzi's moment came in 2006.
When there was a brutal, a very short but brutal war between
the Shia Lebanese political party, Hezbollah and Israel.
And Ramzi who had already been uprooted
from his winery once,
as a child, said, "No, I'm not moving."
And he stayed for a month with his vines.
Under the bombs, the shrapnel was fizzing in the vineyard.
If ever there was a moment in which the Lebanese winemaker,
the Lebanese entrepreneur was defined
by resilience,
by stubbornness,
by bravery,
it was the fact that Ramzi Ghosn lived with his vines
amid the bombing for one month in 2006
he said, "I'm not fucking leaving."
- People who look at the grim aspect of war only
will never get out of it.
People should look at the positive aspect of war
and this is entrenched deeply in the Lebanese culture.
We have to make the best of every single day,
we have to be thankful
and to make every day an opportunity
to learn something
and to advance
and to become stronger.
My wine-making practices
definitely changed because of war.
There is no doubt that my wine became for people
who want to enjoy every single day of their lives.
I want to enjoy my wine now, not in 10 years.
And...
2006 reaffirmed
that the Lebanese and our culture is about
daily "dolce vita".
Summer 2006,
everything was perfect.
Ripening of the grapes was going very well
and then a few skirmishes happened in the south
and one day, my brother and I were seated here
watching the news, just to try to understand
what was going on and all the sudden a bridge
not far from here was hit by the Israeli Air Force.
And then it was like a movie.
As if you're not watching a movie
but you are a subject in the movie.
From this moment, we started to take measures
to cope with a longer war in a way.
I didn't imagine ourselves
being here, passive, watching.
The worst experience was the bombing of the candy factory,
not far from here because we lost the daughter of one
of our helpers at the restaurant here.
- Everything was destroyed. Everything with trucks
was destroyed, drones were destroying everything,
that seems like a truck.
They destroyed all the bridges,
so they think now the trucks are taking the old roads
and they should be destroyed.
There was no pilot, there was no human in the plane.
It was drone bombarding,
so nobody had the courage to go and make the harvest
because it was very risky.
We went to Serge's office and he told me,
"What are you going to do?"
I told him, "We are going to pick."
He told me, "How can you do it?"
I told him, "You have your war, let me have my war."
He said "Okay" and he was on telephone, on air
with Radio Grape in California.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Grape Radio, where an enthusiasm
for wine gets personal.
And today joining us long distance, we have Serge Hochar
thanks for joining us, Serge.
- Thank you, Lebanon, you should add Lebanon.
- Lebanon is well known right now because
it's been in all the headlines, how close are you
to where all the action was?
- So there was a convoy coming to Bekaa
and when it arrived to a village called Kefraya.
I don't know what happened, they were hit by a plane.
I don't know why. There was a convoy of 1,500 cars
and it had been prepared with the United Nations
and it was supposed to be a safe convoy
and finally, the hit happened in Kefraya
which is one of the villages where we have our vineyards.
- Tarek called to tell me that
we have to pick up the grapes.
I was worried about the bombs but the grapes were on the line.
We have to fight and pick up the grapes.
- We went to the Bekaa Valley, we have no pickers.
This was a war zone and everything was destroyed
bridges, roads, trucks, so nobody was here.
Nobody thought there will be any agricultural movement
or harvest of any kind.
Nobody thought that would happen.
We arrived to the village looking for help.
It was an emergency so I rang the bell.
(bell ringing)
When villagers started gathering around we asked for their help.
- "Yes, yes, we will do it, we will do it."
People were astonished because there was no work to do,
there was nothing to do and people come.
40, 50 person, ladies, men, it was astonishing.
There is unknown soldier behind it.
When the trucks were loaded, we had a big flag.
We put the big flag on the cases, so the drone can see it.
And we said, "Let's go."
Everything was set up, I was alone in my car
he was alone in his truck and we drove.
So he was in front, I was backing him behind.
So if anything happened, I would help
I would interfere, I would do anything.
- We could see the drones above our heads.
We didn't know if we were going to die or not.
- We can see the trucks on fire
because they are being hit by missiles,
and suddenly, boom!
I saw the smoke coming from the truck.
I said we were hit by a drone, so I saw the driver
opening the door and throw himself into the ditch.
I did like him, I opened the door
and threw myself into the ditch.
But when we just look, we saw water
water coming from the car
we knew it was the radiator
because it was smoking,
and the water was running down and the vapor was going up
we knew it was the radiator.
(chuckling)
As if all your body was waiting
for something and this feeling explode on the radiator.
Understand, you were tense, we were tense.
Thank God, it was the radiator!
We were not wine makers, we were wine crusaders.
- Sometimes I look at events in Lebanon
that would just throw Western society.
The fact we don't have electricity 24 hours a day
would send people running into the streets
like zombies in most Western capitals
but here we just get on with it.
We take a cable from here, we put it there
we plug into a different generator and we make it work.
Sure, at the beginning it must've been a pain
but after a while you adapt.
George Sara is another young man who immediately
understands conflict and will not be thrown
or be fazed by conflict.
He understands that if his wine maker has to land in Syria
because the airport in Beirut is shut
and he has to go to the Syrian border to pick his winemaker up
to bring him back to start the wine making process
and the harvest as they had to do in 2006.
That... to a Lebanese
is just what you have to do.
- James, at the time, was in Paris
or was in Bordeaux, I think, I don't know,
he was in France on vacation and I receive a call.
And I was in Syria at the time because
at one point I had to leave.
At the time Syria was safe
and Lebanon was not.
So we were there and he's like
"I have to get back because I have to harvest,"
and I'm like, "James, but it's not possible
because there are no roads."
He's like, "I need you to book me a ticket to Damascus
I need to take a car."
I'm like, "But James, the roads are destroyed."
He's like, "I don't care, I have to go back
I have to harvest, otherwise, we'll miss the year."
The war is on and we don't know what may happen.
We were waiting, day by day we kept informed of the events
and all I was seeing was the date
of the harvest was getting closer.
Usually I go and check the grapes
to see how they are doing
and I couldn't do that!
So I reserve a ticket for James
he comes to Damascus
we get in the car, we drive up to the borders.
This is actually a very lucky story
a stroke of luck because the day he arrived
was the day they stopped the war.
- As soon as I heard that the war was over
the next morning, which was August 15th.
I tried but couldn't get a flight
because everything was closed.
So on the 16th, I got a flight to Damascus
in Damascus, the road was destroyed.
He picked me up at the airport
and dropped me off at the border in the "free zone,"
which was destroyed between the two countries.
He left me there I walked through
the "free zone" with my baggage in hand
and picked up a taxi on the other side,
it took me to the winery,
arriving the evening of the 16th.
Two days later, we began harvesting
I was very relieved!
- I remember it very well, there's a huge crater
in the middle of the road and he's there with his Samsonite
black bag carrying it in his hand
and I stop at the crater, I'm like,
"I'm sorry I can't go further."
Had the war lasted longer
we would have lost a great deal
of our Chardonnay and Sauvignon
mostly the whites and some Merlot
so there, it was a miracle!
The war stopped at the perfect moment.
- So this is why war for me was a lucky thing.
War forced me to get out of Lebanon.
War was the reason why, instead of Lebanon
we became a global wine all over the world, okay?
This is a good reason, so please, thank you for war
because of war, we were delayed in the harvesting
like in 1984, I had to harvest due to political reasons
and not due to weather reasons.
This is why today I became,
I became myself very addicted to old wines because
the wine, sometimes, is not ready, which happened to me
two years ago, we had the visit, of your friend here
whose name is Paul Grieco.
- I long for something like that,
it was never part of my personal experience.
How cool would it be to go there?
And then it became one of, I can't believe I'm actually
going to Lebanon, like, I must be out of my goddamn mind
and when I flew into the airport.
I wasn't tension filled
when I left the airport, it was like
oh, so buildings bombed out
shrapnel marks everywhere, tanks on the street.
It's not part of that usual wine country trip
scenery that you get when you go to Mosel river valley
or Bordeaux or Tuscany, whatever and ultimately
when I look at a bottle of wine,
it's just grape juice with alcohol, that is what it is,
and it is everything surrounding the bottle of wine
religion, history, philosophy
culture, civilization, movement of mankind
blah, blah, blah...
that pulls me into this.
- And Paul Grieco told me, "Serge,
I want to taste the '84."
I told him, "Paul, it's not wine.
I said "Look...
It's probably evolving, it's probably become a port
but it's not wine,"
and then I opened the bottle, he tasted it and said, "Serge.
I will list this wine if you ship it to the US."
- It was like, holy shit, what roller coaster
ride is this thing on?
And it wasn't-most wine follows a beautiful arc.
At least that's what I've read and been taught
and all of those things.
Serge's wine never followed a goddamn arc
from beginning to middle to end.
It began, and then it went down, and then it came back up
and it went down, it was like all over the goddamn place
which made every interaction with it
a thrill ride, again tension, at times, you never knew which you
were going to get and then you hear
"Well, we're not bottling it, we never
wanted to, we never will."
It's like, excuse me?
- Serge was an ultimate character to me because
of the relentless stubborn passion
with which he lived his life.
You know, there are people who talk a lot of smack about living
a passionate life and showing up and being in the moment
and experiencing every instant and wasting nothing
and following their curiosity and then there are people
who do it and the difference between people who speak
about it and people who actually do it is vast
and when you find somebody who has actually devoted
their entire life to passionate, awake, conscious
delighted, sensory living, they're magnetic.
- I hope you do not like it.
I hope you do not like it.
- He was very, very engaging
he genuinely, I think, liked people
and wanted them to engage with him
and loved very, very distinctive conversations,
which could rapidly veer off.
He didn't really want to talk about the certain
sort of things that most wine makers want to talk about
fermentation temperatures, different oaks
that sort of thing, he was much more interested
in wine as social glue, if you like
what wine could do for humanity.
I've been to Lebanon twice, once in 1970
when it was absolutely the jewel of the Middle East
everyone was having a great time, very relaxed
and then again, in 1980, to visit Chateau Musar with Serge.
I was traveling with one other wine writer,
we had to go through, I think, three different
really quite difficult army checkpoints.
Serge couldn't come and meet us at the airport.
You were very, very aware of the fact that you were entering
not a current war zone but one that could
return to being a war zone at any moment.
- What made you take a trip to Lebanon in a civil war?
- That's a very, very good question.
I've always loved adventure and loved travel and been curious
and always been on the side of the underdog
as far as wine is concerned and Lebanese wine
was much, much less well known then
and I felt it needed a bit of attention.
- What I took away from my experience with Serge
was less about the wines in particular
and more about a way of being.
What remains in me is this one particular thing that he said
that was one of those sort of clues of life changing
information that somebody gives you at an important moment
and we were sitting on his balcony, we were drinking this
1972 wine that he had made right after he had taken over
the winery and he was instructing me on how to...
he said, "We're gonna sit here all afternoon and drink this.
We're gonna start at three o'clock and
we're not gonna be done until nine o'clock,
this one bottle of wine.
We're gonna let it sit and then we're gonna have a little more
and then we're gonna talk about it and then
we're gonna have a little more and we're gonna
talk about it, we're gonna watch the light change
we're gonna watch the wine change
and we're gonna have this experience together."
And while he was talking, I kept trying to kind of impress
him by telling him what the wine tasted like
and he kept saying, "It's too soon to judge it."
Now at this point,
we're three hours in to one bottle of wine
and he just kept holding me back and saying,
"I don't want your conclusions on this
let's just talk about what it's making you feel
what it's reminding you of."
and I kept trying to say, "Well, it tastes like this"
and he said, "You don't know yet what tastes like.
It hasn't grown yet, we need to let the wine
be the whole bottle."
and he had this wonderful line where he said
"Just like people
wine is something that you cannot judge
until you've seen it through every season of its being.
So don't rush to a judgment on anybody or anything until
you've seen it through every season of its incarnation."
And I have never forgotten that, I cannot tell you
how many times when I'm in conflict
with somebody in a relationship
whether it's a friend or a relative or a neighbor
I just think we're not done with this bottle of wine yet.
Before you start labeling this person
or sort of putting them in a box or deciding something
about them, just wait.
You haven't seen them through all their seasons yet
this is just a moment in this person's life
and you're at a moment in your own life and tomorrow
they're gonna be completely different and so are you
so just hold back.
That was always his thing.
wait, not so fast, right?
Not so fast and don't judge it, don't declare anything
just watch the story unfold
and that to me is spiritual mastery.
- His wines appealed to people but it was he who really
gave the wine character and how he came to die
again, was very original.
Going for a walk on the beach
(melancholy piano music)
never to be seen again.
(waves crashing)
Memorable.
- The '84 was an accident at infancy
born, conceived in accident.
(chuckling)
We didn't invent the '84.
It could have not come to the winery and there's no story.
- So you see wine is a miracle
this is why I believe in wine.
This is why I'm giving you all the
story to give you a philosophy.
What is wine?
Wine is beyond anything you could think of.
The biggest medicine on Earth,
the biggest miracle,
wine is the link
between God and humanity.
Wine is the link.
Should I continue or should I stop?
No, I'll stop.
Done.
We imagine that wine is another product.
Wine is not another product, it's another life.
And because we cannot master and control life
we cannot pretend that we can control wine.
It's such an unbelievable teacher
because wine makes people communicate
and when you communicate, you can make peace
you don't make war.
(light music)
(upbeat, playful music)