The story of Massaya’s Tanaïl Estate goes back to the early 70's as the Ghosn family acquired an Estate planted with vines. At first, they made homemade Arak from grapes grown on the property. In 1975, the civil war raged in Lebanon forcing the Ghosn’s to leave their home. Seventeen years later Sami Ghosn, by then an architect working in Los Angeles, returned to Lebanon and revisited the war-ravaged family estate. The land worked its magic and he decided to give up everything in order to devote himself to bringing the domain back to life. He revived the distillation of homemade Arak spirit and entrusted the marketing to his brother Ramzi, who was at that time living in France, managing his own restaurant company. The famous blue bottles of Arak turned into an instant success and the Tanail estate was reborn from the ashes but Sami Ghosn had still greater ambitions which have now come to fruition. Today Massaya is a French–Lebanese collaboration that began as recently as 1998. On the Lebanese side is Sami Ghosn, whilst the French partners are Daniel Brunier (Vieux Télégraph) and Hubert de Boüard de Laforest (ex-Cheval Blanc). Their first release was from the 1999 vintage, and these are clearly wines that have a good deal of complexity and style to them, born out of a huge amount of collective world class winemaking experience. Sami Ghosn is a fascinating speaker and tells the story of his top class estate with real passion and personality. The wines (which are excellent) will speak for themselves. This will be a fascinating tasting.