The wonder of Lebanese wine

In the Levant, the grape has been cultivated for millennia, some of it used for wine. The hills of Lebanon were — and are — especially fertile, as the Jesuits discovered. The Society of Jesus was the SAS of the Counter-Reformation. Its alumni were famous for intellectual ability and physical courage: scholars and martyrs. They were also notorious for deviousness. Even Catholic monarchs regarded them with suspicion: the latter-day successors of the Templars. But at least Jesuits were not burnt at the stake, merely expelled from a number of countries, including Spain.

The Jesuits believed that in order to convert the world, they had to move effortlessly in sophisticated circles. To that end, they kept a good table, reinforced by a fine cellar. Hence their wine-growing endeavours in Lebanon, at Ksara in the Bekaa valley, which started in 1857. They acquired vines that had been producing sweet wine for sacramental purposes.