The story of the grape of Lebanon .. This is how the war challenged and the bombing of Israel!

The British newspaper “The Guardian” published a new report saying that the Lebanese wine makers are struggling to remain in the midst of the tensions between Lebanon and Israel.
The report translated by “Lebanon 24” says that the owners of vineyards in the Bekaa focus more on the Israeli air strikes from the crop this year, and asked: “How do these family companies deal with this situation?”

He continued: “Last September, Elias Maalouf and his father were sitting in Shato Rayak, the family wine factory in the Bekaa in Lebanon, when they decided to go home for lunch. Five minutes later, an Israeli plane shot down a bomb on a house located on the other side of the street, which crushed the building and destroyed a large part of the wine factory.
According to the report, 41 -year -old Maalouf says he is sitting in the wine factory where repair workers replace a broken TV after 5 months: “If we do not leave, we would have died.”
What appears, according to the report, is that the doors were destroyed by the power of the explosion, while the broken glass was scattered on the table that is now sought, and that the furniture wood is still full of holes due to shrapnel.
According to the report, “After an hour of the bombing, Maalouf returned to the wine factory and started with repair work, so he collected broken bottles, some of which dates back to more than twenty years, and removed a piece that fell in front of his store, and collected broken equipment in his distillation factory.”
In his speech via “The Guardian”, Maalouf says: “All I was able to smell is wine. You are always enjoying the smell of your own wine, but that day was the worst smell that I can imagine is the smell of my loss. ”
Maalouf lost about 40 thousand bottles and 158,600 pounds as compensation, and had to leave 60 tons of grapes to wither on the vine.
The escalation of fighting across the Lebanese border between Hezbollah and Israel began on October 8, 2023, after the party fired missiles on Israel “in solidarity” with the Palestinians in the wake of the attack led by Hamas on October 7 and the Israeli bombing of Gaza, which led to the outbreak of 13 months of the war.
So far, the fighting resulted in the death of more than 3,900 people in Lebanon, the displacement of more than a million people, leaving parts of the south, the Paper Plain and the capital, Beirut, in a state of ruin.
The “Guardian” report notes that “for wine makers in Lebanon, the war was catastrophic,” and adds: “The wine industry in the country is one of the oldest industries in the world and produced 7 million bottles annually before the war, including the famous Chateau Musar.”
The report pointed out that “this industry relies heavily on tourism, and that many of the small chrome farms that have appeared in the past 15 years depend on visitors and events to earn a living.”
The report continued: “Maalouf has little hope to obtain compensation from Hezbollah, who promised to finance those affected by the war, but as a organization that did not finance the rebuilding of a wine factory. Without his knowledge, the building that Maalouf saw on the street was an facility for the production of drones belonging to Hezbollah, which is a major goal for Israel.
He continued: “This is not the first time that the war hinders the wine industry for Maalouf, because the land whose fertile soil was given a special flavor, and the country whose rich history inspired its craft, sometimes they caused it to endanger it.”
In turn, Roland Abu Khater, who runs the company “Coto de Liban” in the city of Zahle in the Bekaa, refused to prevent him from producing wine. In recent months, when he heard the bombing stopped, he raised the white flag on his truck, rushes to the generosity of grapes, and begins to harvest.
Abu Khater was transferred to grapes in trucks whose bishops were removed, so that Israeli drones can see that vehicles do not pose any threat, a trick he learned from his father in the 2006 Israeli war.
In his speech via “The Guardian”, Abu Khater says: “My father used to tell me that grapes would never wait for the end of the war, and that we cannot leave grapes on the vine.”
The generosity produces about 150,000 bottles annually, most of them for export to Europe. Although Abu Khater and his wife Tamara Jabara trained in the techniques of wine industry in France, they insist on using local grape varieties in Lebanon.
Despite their relentless efforts, Abu Khater and his wife lost thirty tons of grapes, and they were unable to mobilize some types of wine on the specified date during the war, due to the lack of imported cork. Also, air freight operations stopped alongside all other flights to Lebanon, with the exception of the National Aviation Company.
Here, Jabara says: “We had to ferment without knowing whether we could sell it or not. Grapes did not wait, and the wine was not waiting. ”
In southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, wine makers had to face a large -scale environmental destruction.
According to the “Guardian”, Israeli ammunition burned up to 2192 hectares (5414 acres) of chrome, and tens of thousands of olive trees were destroyed, and thousands of livestock were killed, according to the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research.
Moreover, environmental experts fear that the wide use in southern Lebanon for ammunition containing white phosphorus, which produces thick thick smoke, will have a long -term effect on the environment, because the sticky black -tariffs that resemble the black tar may ignite again when exposed to oxygen.

In a study conducted by the Lebanese Ministry of Environment, it found high levels of heavy metals and a quantity of phosphorous equivalent to 900 times the amount received by the soil that was bombed with artillery and white phosphorous bombs.
Scientists are still testing the soil in southern Lebanon to see if there are any long -term traces that may pose a threat to public health and agriculture.
Although the Les Vignes du Marje was not subjected to direct shelling by any Israeli bombs, Carroll Toury Khoury and her husband Imad Khoury did not use any of the grapes from their land in Marjayoun, a town 8 kilometers from the Lebanese -Israeli border.
In her speech, Carroll said: “No piece of land was poured into white phosphorous, but in the event of an emergency, we did not use any grapes from Marjayoun, because we were afraid of asking people if the white phosphorous affects wine.”
To protect their wine from vibration in their tanks from the near bombing, the Al -Khoury family moved to a second place away from the border in July 2024, according to the “Guardian”.
It was necessary to move the bottles very slowly under the misdemeanor of darkness, because exposing them to the sun and their sheds might spoil their contents. On the other hand, Israel and Hezbollah were more active in bombing at night, so the journey was not free of risk.
With the withdrawal of the report, keeping wine still throughout the trip means that those who transported it had to drive very slowly, which led to the conversion of the journey that was supposed to take two hours to more than four hours, as the risk of bombing was waving on the horizon.
After the war ended after the ceasefire in November and the partial withdrawal of the Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, Lebanese wine makers began to rebuild their industry and look forward to better days.
Maalouf is now working on a new wine bottle named Juliana, on the name of his wife, who is submitted to her in the first ten minutes after their meeting.
The bottle will be the latest volume of the history of his family and the city from which they descend, the stories of love that they lived and the wars they witnessed, all through the wine they drink.