WINE IS ALL AROUND US… or, it was…

Despite the words in the Holy Quran forbidding the drinking of alcohol, by the time the Muhammaden era started in about 700 AD, wine had been made and consumed all over the Middle East and Mediterranean regions for several thousand years. By the time Cyprus got into the act, all the countries now surrounding us were major wine producing areas. Syria was the most notable and the Syrian wine industry, eventually put into an almost-terminal decline in the Islamic era, had been noted for quality and major production for as long as 3,000 years. Lebanon, of course, “created” as a nation only in 1923, was once part of Syria and has always produced wines. Some of them, such as Chateau Musar, Clos St. Thomas and Kefraya are distinctive and distinguished.

Archaeologists and historians have turned up countless records, illustrated and textual, of viticulture and viniculture. In the city state of Ebla, Syria, 20,000 cuneiform tablets were found, dating from 300BC, which contain the earliest references to viniculture. They revealed that the supply of wine was limited, and the exclusive drink of the nobility. Not surprising when you realise that in Europe much the same situation pertained until quite recent times.

In Syrian Mesopotamia (now called Tell Hariri), 25,000 cuneiform tablets were found indicating a plentiful supply of wine and its importance in trade within the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean region dating to 20003000 BC. Early settlement in a Bronze Age citystate in the Syrian Mediterranean, dates back to 600 BC, but achieved its economic zenith between 1450 BC and 1200 BC. Cuneiform tablets document that extensive viticulture was practiced and wine was traded internationally. Around 1200 BC, the city was taken over by the Sea Peoples and its buildings razed.

Mari,

Ugarit,

In several Middle-eastern countries the two main cooking agents are olive oil and rendered lamb fat. Before my first visit there, for some years I had always asked my butcher for the fat (“suet”) surrounding the lambs’ hearts I liked to cook, which I chopped, put into a pot and set over a low heat, stirring every few minutes. This produced excellent fat for roasting potatoes and other things. Then I went to Lebanon and saw fat-tailed sheep, something like this (without the trolley!) ….

Soon I was in a kitchen and watched as the fat tail was cut and the small amount of meat separated from the fat, after which the fat was cut into small chunks and rendered (*). Later, some of the fat was used to fry potatoes, which I thought delicious – the fat not being quite as strong flavoured as that from the leg.