Middle East - Anthony Ham [81]
Wine is growing in popularity in the Middle East, thanks largely to the fine vintages being produced in Lebanon. Lebanon’s winemaking, which is based on the ‘old-world’ style, began with the French winemaker Gaston Hochar who took over an 18th-century castle, Château Musar in Ghazir, 24km north of Beirut, in 1930. Together with his sons, Hochar created a wine that, despite the civil war, was able to win important awards in France, including the prestigious Winemaker’s Award for Excellence. Ninety per cent of their produce is exported. The main wine-growing areas are Kefraya and Ksara in the Bekaa Valley and we particularly recommend the products of Château Musar and Ksara’s Reserve du Couvent. For more information on some of Lebanon’s wines see the boxed text, Click here.
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The Café & coffeehouse experience
There’s nothing more authentically Middle Eastern than spending an hour (or an afternoon) soaking up the ambience and fragrant nargileh smoke at a qahwa (coffeehouse; ahwa in Egypt); in Turkey they’re called çay bahçesis (tea gardens). Most serve up more tea than coffee and all have loyal, predominantly male, clients who enjoy nothing more than a daily natter and a game of dominoes or towla (backgammon). Adding to the atmosphere in more ways than one is the smoke from countless water pipes, a fragrant cloud of lightly scented tobacco that’s one of the Middle East’s most distinctive sensory experiences.
Called a nargileh in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and a sheesha in Egypt, the water pipe is a tradition, an indulgence and a slightly naughty habit all wrapped into the one gloriously relaxing package. A feature of coffeehouses from Ankara to Aswan, it’s as addictive as it is magical. Consider yourselves warned.
When you order a water pipe you’ll need to specify the type of tobacco and molasses mix you’d like. Most people opt for tobacco soaked in apple juice (known as elma in Turkey and tufah in Egypt), but it’s also possible to order strawberry, melon, cherry or mixed-fruit flavours. Some purists order their tobacco unadulterated, but in doing this they miss out on the wonderfully sweet aroma that makes the experience so memorable. Once you’ve specified your flavour, a decorated bulbous glass pipe filled with water will be brought to your table, hot coals will be placed in it to get it started and you’ll be given a disposable plastic mouthpiece to slip over the pipe’s stem. Just draw back and you’re off. The only secret to a good smoke is to take a puff every now and again to keep the coals hot; when they start to lose their heat the waiter (or dedicated water-pipe minder) will replace them. Bliss!
This being the Middle East, however, not all cafés and coffeehouses are created equal, at least not for women. Wandering into a traditional café as a woman will always turn heads, but in Damascus, Beirut and parts of Amman, the clatter of domino chips will quickly resume and you’re unlikely to feel uncomfortable. In Egypt, Turkey, the Palestinian Territories and the coffeehouses of smaller towns across the region, you’ll be far more of an attraction for far longer than you’d like to be.
There are many classic Middle Eastern coffeehouses, but if we had to choose just two classics among classics, they would be Al-Nawfara (Click here) in the Old City in Damascus and Fishawi’s (Click here) in Cairo.
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You can drink arak neat, but most devotees first pour about two fingers of arak,