Vinifest - Lebanon's Wine Festival

How to Complete

4 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. 📜 1

   Decode 3,000 Years at the Festival Gate

   history Free

   The people who lived on this exact coast — in Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, cities just an hour's drive from where you're standing right now — did more to spread wine across the world than anyone before or since. Around 1000 BC, they loaded amphorae of wine onto their cedar ships and carried it to Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, France, Spain at the main entrance gate of the Beirut Hippodrome, Horsh district. In 2020, archaeologists excavating Tell el-Burak, five miles south of Sidon, found a 2,600-year-old Phoenician wine press with a basin that could hold 1,200 gallons of raw grape juice. Look up at the Hippodrome — this horse-racing track was built in 1921, but the wine tradition it hosts reaches back 2,600 years to that muddy press south of Sidon. Take 60 seconds before you enter to let that register.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the festival isn't running during your visit, the Hippodrome itself is open for horse racing every Sunday. Worth seeing — the same ancient track, a different spectacle.

   🍷 Log Memory
2. 🍷 2

   Hunt the Grapes That Sailed the Ancient Mediterranean

   wine $$

   Lebanon grows something nobody else in the world has: Obaideh and Merwah, two indigenous white grape varieties that are found ONLY here, grown only in the Bekaa Valley at 1,000 meters altitude between the Lebanon mountains and the Anti-Lebanon mountains. These are the grapes the Phoenicians cultivated inside the Hippodrome festival grounds — scan the exhibitor booths until you find producers pouring Obaideh or Merwah. Ask every exhibitor: 'Do you have Obaideh or Merwah?' and watch them light up, because most visitors only know French varieties. Obaideh has an unmistakeable honeyed creaminess, Merwah has a floral, almost waxy quality that wine writers compare to Sémillon but it's not Sémillon, it's Lebanese.

   🔄 BACKUP: If no Obaideh or Merwah is being poured (rare but possible at smaller editions), ask specifically for Chateau Musar's white — it blends Obaideh and Merwah, and is one of the most unusual white wines made anywhere on earth. It ages for 20+ years.

   🍷 Log Memory
3. 🍷 3

   Find the 1982 — Wine Pressed While Tanks Fought Over the Vineyards

   wine $$

   In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and eighty hectares of Chateau Musar's vineyards in the Bekaa Valley literally became the frontline — Israeli and Syrian tanks fought over the rows of vines. When a break in the fighting came, loyal Bedouin grape-pickers dashed into the vineyard and harvested what they could at the Chateau Musar booth inside the festival grounds. The must was transported to the winery in trucks navigating militia checkpoints, and Serge Hochar made a wine that Andrew Jefford later described as 'enigmatic simplicity/complexity.' At the Musar booth, taste whatever vintage they're pouring and ask about the 1982 — every representative knows the story of this 'pure wine of war' and wants to tell it.

   🔄 BACKUP: If Musar isn't exhibiting in a particular year (rare), find Massaya instead — founded 1998 by the Ghosn brothers after returning to their family's Bekaa estate that was abandoned during the civil war. Partners include the Brunier family of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Different war story, same defiant survival.

   🍷 Log Memory
4. ⛰️ 4

   Watch Beirut Throw Its Wine Festival as the Music Starts

   adventure Free

   Every October, Eventions puts up tents on the Hippodrome while winemakers race to finish their Bekaa harvest before bombardments make it impossible, 70+ winemakers arrive from across Lebanon, and thousands of people come to drink wine and hear music in the open air. This is the largest wine festival in the Middle East happening in a city that has been through 15 years of civil war, a $113 billion financial collapse, and the 2020 port explosion. Walk the perimeter of the Hippodrome festival grounds at golden hour — October in Beirut, the sun sets around 6:30pm. Stop drinking for 20 minutes, walk the full length of the grounds, and watch the crowd as music echoes off the old grandstands. The contrast — what this city has been through, what this festival insists on being — is the reveal moment.

   🔄 BACKUP: If you're not there during the festival, walk to Horsh Beirut — the large pine and olive forest park directly adjacent to the Hippodrome. One of the few large green spaces in the city, it was closed for years and only reopened in 2016 after sustained campaigning by NGOs. In October it's beautiful.

   🍷 Log Memory

Insider Tips

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  Book accommodation well in advance - this is a major event

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  The 2025 edition features the Dominican Republic as guest of honor

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  Evening concerts transform the racecourse into a party