In the MIX

The Daou brothers extraordinary journey took them from war to fine wine, discovers

When the Lebanese Civil War’s first bomb hit their family home, injuring brothers Daniel and George and their mother, it was a signal to the Daou family to find another haven. Their father first moved his family to France where the brothers gleaned an appreciation for wine, then San Diego, where they studied computer engineering at one of only two universities with a ‘supercomputer’. This led to the formation of the revolutionary Daou Systems, a turning point in hospital technology.

When the pair later sold their invention, Daniel put the money into an eight-year journey of winemaking projects. Starting by pressing grapes in his garage, then taking the plunge to rescue a historic but neglected mountain wine estate in Paso Robles, he reconnected the patchwork of vineyards and restored the century-old ranch house while living on-site without a water supply.

Described by leading winemaker of the postprohibition era, André Tchelistcheff, as ‘a jewel of ecological elements’, the property’s high, atypically cool undulations formed from clay and limestone, not far from the sea, are ideal for particularly fragrant, long-lived, European-style wines.

Looking back at his tumultuous youth, Daniel reasons that what is broken and mended can become better than before, as in kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending pottery. Indeed, kintsugi is alluded to in Bodyguard, a bold, blue-fruited, mineral Petit Verdot-led wine with a Gustav Klimt-like label embossed with kintsugi-esque veins. For the Daou brothers, their bodyguard was their mother, ‘who always shielded us’, recalls Daniel. Bodyguard by Daou, £45, at woodwinters.com