In Lebanese Wine, Perseverance Is Part of the Terroir
When an explosion devastated Beirut, shattering the offices of the Saadé family's wine firm, a father and two sons took it as another challenge to overcome
Beirut's port was devastated by the blast, which was equivalent to a 3.3 magnitude earthquake.
(AFP via Getty Images)
By
Dec 9, 2020
On Aug. 4, just after 6 p.m., Johnny Saadé and his sons Sandro and Karim were meeting in his office on the eighth floor of a building on Pasteur Street in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood of Beirut. The family of vintners owns two wine estates—the 148-acre Chateau Marsyas in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley and the 30-acre Bargylus in Syria—but their business and management offices sit less than a half-mile from the port of Beirut. From their windows, they had noticed a fire start in the port.