Wine from Lebanon Launches, Seeks Distributors in Texas

North American Wine & Spirit Importers, LLC (NAWSI), Houston,   launched Wine from Lebanon. NAWSI is seeking distribution for the Wine from Lebanon program.

The launch is introducing 15 winemakers – including several female-owned and managed wineries, winemakers under 40 years old and winemakers  from one of the oldest  wine growing regions in the world -- to the State of Texas. Texas ranks 4th in the U.S. for wine consumption, consuming 60.3 million gallons of wine a year.

The wines use four unique indigenous grapes, Obaideh, Merwah, Meksassi and Sobbagiegh.  

"Lebanon's winemaking history stretches as far back to the Phoenicians and Cana where Jesus turned water into wine," said Sam A. Jaoude, who was born in Lebanon and is a managing partner of NAWSI.  

Some 7,000 years ago, the Lebanese people's ancestors—the seafaring Phoenicians – domesticated grapes, perfected viticulture and spread it throughout the Mediterranean between 2700 B.C. and 300 B.C. Wine was an important trading item, but evidence of winemaking had been scant until the recent discovery of a 2,600-year-old winepress unearthed at Tell el-Burak, five miles south of the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon.