News: Arab world wine industry in full bloom

Link to an article posted in The Daily Star (Agence France Presse)

I find it hard to believe that any more that a small fraction of potential for quality can be realized in the Arab world when indigenous consumption is forbidden by the dominant religion, including for those who make the wine.

The case of Lebanon is different because there is a significant Christian minority.

In the days when Algeria was a French département, there were some quite respected wines grown there which enjoyed VDQS status. The French also produced apparently decent wine from Morocco and Tunisia in the colonial days. I have recently seen some Moroccan wine in shops here but have not taken the plunge.

Randy,

I think that the best you can hope for if foreigners make wine in, say, Morocco, is a marketing man's industrial scale wine aimed at the mass consumers in Europe and America. I'm sure that wines with real personality like Lebanon's Musar demand a cadre of discriminating local customers as well as connoisseur owners.

I don't quite follow your reference to Argentina, which is a Latin country with a long wine drinking as well as growing tradition. It is apparently true that targeting international market has changed wine styles (also in Chile), but I think that the bulk of the foremost producers are Argentinian and there is of course a large local market.