Batroun Wine District

How to Complete

5 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. 📜 1

   Stand on the Wall That Named a Wine Region

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: The Phoenician Sea Wall, Batroun Bay — walk south along the waterfront from St. Stephen's Cathedral until you reach the ancient stone barrier jutting into the Mediterranean.

   💡 WHAT: You are standing on something Rome could only dream of building. The Greeks renamed this city Botrys — meaning 'bunch of grapes' — because the hills above were carpeted in vines. Rome conquered it in 64 BC as part of Pompey's eastern campaign, specifically because Batroun was one of the great wine cities of antiquity. The Phoenicians built this exact wall in the 1st century BC to protect their merchant fleet from storms. The Romans later used it as a quarry. Two civilizations, one wall — 2,100 years old and still standing in the sea.

   🎯 HOW: The wall is 225 meters long and free to access. Walk the full length. Face south: that harbor where local fishermen tie up their boats has operated continuously since the Phoenicians used it to load wine onto cedar ships bound for Egypt. Then look at the wall itself — see those sandstone blocks? Those are petrified sand dunes reinforced with masonry. You are touching geology that predates the Phoenicians, shaped by a civilization older than Rome, standing in a city that the ancient world praised for its wine.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the wall path is temporarily closed, the Church of Our Lady of the Sea (on the rocks just to the north) gives the same sweeping view of the harbor and wall from above. Also free.

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2. 📜 2

   Find the Amphitheatre Nobody Told You Exists

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: The garden of Studio Jammal, Batroun old town. From Rue Principale, take the turn at Traboulsi pharmacy, walk 50 meters on the right.

   💡 WHAT: There is an unfinished Roman amphitheatre hiding in a photographer's garden in the middle of Batroun, and almost nobody knows it's there. Rome began building it around 218–222 BC during the Hellenistic period, when this city was a prize of the eastern Mediterranean wine trade. They never finished it. The empire moved on; the half-circle of stone slabs was swallowed by vines for centuries until Youssef Jammal, the photographer who owns the property, uncovered and restored it in the 1990s. The 40-meter semicircle — still in private hands, still largely off the tourist trail — is one of the strangest and most intimate encounters with ancient Rome anywhere on the Mediterranean coast.

   🎯 HOW: Ring the bell at Studio Jammal and ask if you may view the Roman theatre in the garden. It costs nothing. Photograph the carved stone curve emerging from the hillside. Then imagine what this city must have been worth to Rome — a military campaign (Pompey, 64 BC), a conquered province (Provincia Phoenice), an unfinished amphitheatre — all for a place the Greeks named after a bunch of grapes.

   🔄 BACKUP: If Studio Jammal is closed, you can often see the semicircle of stones from the street above. The Discover Lebanon website has a panoramic photo taken from the adjacent hillside at discoverlebanon.com (search 'Batroun Roman Theatre').

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3. 🍷 3

   Taste the Grape That Predates Bordeaux by Millennia

   wine $$

   📍 WHERE: IXSIR Winery, Basbina village, 7km east of Batroun. The winery is a restored 17th-century seigniorial house. Drive east from Batroun center toward Basbina; winery is signposted on the Route des Vins du Nord (dark red signs with white font). GPS: 34.2369, 35.7075.

   💡 WHAT: Here is the thing about Merweh that nobody tells you in wine school: this grape, grown on these hillsides, is genetically related to Bordeaux's Sémillon. But Merweh was here first — by thousands of years. The Phoenicians were cultivating and exporting wine from this exact coast in the 7th century BC. In 2020, archaeologists unearthed a 2,600-year-old Phoenician wine press near Sidon — industrial scale, storage jars intact, built for Mediterranean export. When you taste IXSIR's white wine, you are drinking the direct descendant of what the Phoenicians put in cedar ships to sell to Egypt and Greece. Their 2018 Grande Réserve Rosé was voted #1 rosé on earth out of 204,675 wines worldwide.

   🎯 HOW: Book a guided tasting in advance: +961 71 631 613 or via ixsir.com. The 8-wine tasting costs approximately $10 USD per person. The tour runs Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–4pm. Ask specifically for any wine featuring Merweh or Obaideh — the ancient indigenous whites. When it arrives, ask your guide: 'What is this grape related to in France?' The answer (Sémillon) lands differently when you are holding it on a hillside where it has grown for 3,000 years.

   🔄 BACKUP: If IXSIR is full, Batroun Mountains Winery (Rawabi Village, +961 81 305 809) is Lebanon's only EU-certified organic winery and also grows Obaideh and Merwah alongside international varieties. They welcome visitors and pair wines with local produce.

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4. ⛰️ 4

   Drink a Recipe That Has Not Changed Since 1888

   adventure $

   📍 WHERE: Hilmi's House of Lemonade, old souk area, central Batroun. Two locations: the original shop in the heart of the old souk, and a kiosk on the Batroun–Byblos highway. GPS: ~34.2558, 35.6612 (old souk). Tel: +961 81 991 888.

   💡 WHAT: In 1888, a man in Batroun started selling fresh-squeezed lemonade from his cart under the lemon trees that line this coast. His grandson, Hilmi, turned it into Chez Hilmi in 1962 — famous enough to win Lebanon's National Order of the Cedar (the country's highest civilian honor) in 1974. In 2012, the people of Batroun set a Guinness World Record: 5,534 litres of lemonade in a single cup, made from 2,300 litres of fresh juice. In 2017, Hilmi's three granddaughters — Rana, Farah, and Nour — reopened it as the world's first House of Lemonade, complete with the world's only lemonade museum, where the ancestral utensils still sit on display.

   🎯 HOW: Order the classic Batrouni lemonade — fresh-squeezed, never from concentrate, the same recipe since 1888. Then walk through the tiny museum inside and look at the utensils. Four generations of the same family, the same lemons from the same coastal groves, the same recipe, in a city that has been continuously inhabited since the 3rd millennium BC. Between IXSIR's ancient Merweh wine and Hilmi's ancient lemon trees, you are somewhere inside a very long, very delicious story.

   🔄 BACKUP: Every cafe and restaurant in Batroun serves Batrouni lemonade — it is the unofficial civic drink. The original Hilmi's recipe and the museum, however, are only at this address.

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5. ⛰️ 5

   Watch the Sun Set Over 5,000 Years of Wine Harbor

   adventure Free

   📍 WHERE: The Phoenician harbor, Batroun waterfront. Walk to the Church of Our Lady of the Sea — a small 19th-century chapel perched on the coastal rocks at the northern end of the harbor. GPS: 34.2540, 35.6543.

   💡 WHAT: This is the harbor. The only port in Batroun. The same waterfront where Phoenician sailors loaded their wine-filled amphorae, where Roman tax collectors counted the jars, where Crusader knights saw the sea for the first time in their European lives. Today, local fishermen still bring in the daily catch here — their boats tied to the same rocks. To the south, the ancient sea wall you walked earlier catches the last light. The Church of Our Lady of the Sea gives you the full panorama: harbor, wall, Mediterranean horizon, the Lebanese mountains turning pink behind you.

   🎯 HOW: Arrive 30–45 minutes before sunset. Stand on the balcony of the church or find a seat on the coastal rocks just north of the harbor wall. Watch the light change on the ancient stones. If the sun has been generous, the sandstone glows amber — the same color as a well-aged Merweh. The Colonel Brewery, a 5-minute walk east, is an excellent next stop: they brew their own lager, red ale, and arak on-site in a glass-walled facility right on the waterfront, with kayak rentals from Colonel Reef beach if you want the wall from the water.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the harbor is crowded, the Phoenician Wall itself at sunset is equally dramatic — stand at the western end of the wall looking back at the old town with the sea behind you. Same golden hour, different angle on the same 2,100 years.

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