Farming : Organic

Winemaking : Hand-Picked Grapes | Native Yeast Fermentation | Unfined | Unfiltered | Vegan

Region : Deir El Ahmar, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

Grape : 100% Cinsault

Alcohol by Volume : 12.5%

Notes:

Natural Sparkling Pet-Nat red wine. Mostly fermented carbonically, from vineyards planted at 1,200 meters in the Bekaa Valley. Notes of ripe red cherries and raspberries. The wines are pressed, and stabulation happens in tank at 8c for 5 days. This allows for the juice and pulp to spend time together before fermentation starts. The wine then starts fermentation for about 20 days at 14c, it is then bottled at 3 PSI, and it completes fermentation in the bottle, where it rests on lees for 1 year. It is then disgorged in August.

Eddie Chami, the winemaker at Mersel Wine was also one of the winemakers at Couvent Rouge. He holds a degree in Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis, California.

For anyone that knows and speaks to Eddie, you will know that making wine is not a hobby or job, it is a deep-rooted passion. He is passionate about winemaking, as well as preserving and reviving the land of our ancestors and the winemaking techniques used many, many years ago.

Eddie wanted to make wine that is not mainstream in Lebanon. Being born and raised in Australia, he doesn't speak French and didn't want to associate Mersel with the French influence in winemaking. He just wanted to make some f%kn good wine. His passion is to develop wine using local Lebanese indigenous grape varieties but something not common locally. Mersel Wine is the first to develop a Piquette and PetNat and he has been dabbling with skin-contact wines since 2016.

Eddie Chami is a father of 3 and sorry ladies he is off the market (and yes his wife wrote this)...lol :)