Few areas of Lebanon have been left unscathed by the current flare-up—including the Bekaa Valley, the Levantine country’s most prolific wine region, where Hezbollah has a stronghold. This landscape of rolling vineyards, olive groves, and magnificent cedars sounds like the farthest thing from a war zone, but “conflict has always been here,” says Michael Karam, author of Wines of Lebanon and narrator of the 2020 documentary Wine and War. From the time of the Phoenicians to the present, winemaking and war have gone hand in hand here, Karam tells me by phone. With Lebanon at the intersection of empires for millennia, farmers have been forced to grapple with colonization and all sorts of violent incursions. “Being Lebanese is an act of resistance,” he says

 Winemaking in Lebanon has prehistoric origins, stretching farther back in this part of the world than in nearly any other. This is where Phoenicians planted their vines, where Ancient Romans worshipped at the Temple of Bacchus, and where Jesus purportedly turned water to wine. Recently, archaeologists unearthed a grape press in Tell el-Burak that dates to the Iron Age.

Yet despite that rich history, Lebanese wine was virtually unknown in Western wine circles until the 1970s, when a charismatic vintner named Serge Horchar of Chateau Musar, the country’s best-known winery, began eliciting international acclaim for his work with varieties such as obaideh and merwah. Incredibly, that micro-revolution in Lebanese winemaking was taking place under the shadow of a bloody civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in at least 150,000 deaths. 

Horchar’s mission to produce world-class wine in the face of such adversity was not an anomaly but rather a core national trait. For vineyards in France and Italy, the main enemies include hail and downy mildew; in Lebanon, vintners are also up against missiles and cluster bombs. “When you opened a bottle of Musar, you weren’t just opening this great wine from Lebanon. There was an edge to it. It was wine that was made in very difficult circumstances,” Karam says. 

Since then, Lebanon’s wine industry has blossomed, and far more wineries are affected by the current conflict. Here are stories from four of them.

On the eastern edge of the Bekaa Valley, Roland Abou-Khater has lost up to 20 percent of his grapes. Roads across the Bekaa were bombed and rendered impassable, and many of Coteaux Du Liban’s dependable harvesters from Syria have returned home. It’s been a tough run for the family business: After Abou-Khater’s father, who ran the vineyard, died unexpectedly in 2009, Abou-Khater’s mother, a professional pianist, took over. “She didn’t even know how to open a bottle of wine,” he says. 

Spending his childhood in the winery, Abou-Khater “always wanted to be a winemaker,” he tells me. “I used to taste the grapes with my father and tell him, ‘This should be harvested on Monday, this one on Tuesday.’ All of my best memories are with him at the cellar.” 

Last year brought new hardships. “Even though we are in a relatively safe area, hearing the bombing all day, hearing the planes flying at low altitudes—that was traumatizing,” he says. “We were always alert. We were always afraid.” 

East of Coteaux Du Liban, near the Syrian border, sits Chateau Rayak, helmed by Elias Maalouf. Maalouf was born in Ecuador; his father resettled there in 1976 after Lebanon’s civil war broke out, and his winemaking grandfather, Philip, joined the family in the late ’80s. In Ecuador, Maalouf’s grandfather drank wine from Chile, Argentina, and California, but as a “stubborn Mediterranean,” that “wasn’t wine to him at all,” Maalouf says. “He was always nagging his children to take him back to Lebanon.”  

After the war, Maalouf moved back to reclaim his family’s winemaking legacy. “I’m the fifth-generation winemaker, even though my father never made wine because of the civil war,” he says. He proudly built his winery in the Bekaa Valley and reveled in welcoming guests. On September 23, an Israeli air strike purportedly targeting a nearby Hezbollah ammunition store hit Maalouf’s land, destroying his business, his home, and that of his parents. “We are not on the border. We’re in a city, and the bombs are falling next to schools, universities, hospitals, onto houses of civilians,” he says. 

Despite the terror and destruction—Chateau Rayak is still in disrepair, and production is on hold—Maalouf is committed to continuing his craft and to advocating for long-term peace. “My heart is broken,” he says. “What more can we lose? We must invest in peace.”

Eddie Chami’s winery is flanked by the Qornet es-Sawda mountains and is situated nearly 5,000 feet above sea level. “You can see Mount Hermon, where Jordan, Syria, Palestine, and Israel come together,” he says. “It’s a beautiful place to make wine.”

Chami’s property has remained relatively unscathed, but he couldn’t escape the violent tendrils of war. While harvesting one day, he was caught in the crossfire and had to run for cover. “It’ll be a relief when this all ends and the wines are in the tanks and we are okay,” he says. “We are a mighty country, but we can’t outrun the gunpowder the U.S. and Israel keep throwing our way.” 

Chami says the conflict has become part of his day-to-day experience but doesn’t define every moment of it. “You need to go to work. You need to finish harvesting…A friend of yours gives birth, gets engaged.” Chami says. “The most difficult part was getting on with life and living while people were dying around me.” 

In western Lebanon between the Jaouz and Madfoun rivers is the Batroun District, home to one of the country’s only biodynamic wineries. On the land Maher Harb inherited from his late father, who was killed by a car bomb during the Civil War, Harb has planted some 5,000 vines. Sept Winery is as much an homage to his homeland as it is to his father. 

Today’s war is the latest in a series of challenges. Shortly after Sept’s founding in 2017, Lebanon was plunged into several years of tumult due to the COVID-19 pandemic, financial crisis, and Beirut’s catastrophic port explosion. Harb is undeterred: “We adapted. Why? Because the whole Lebanese society adapted. We always have.” 

What wears on him the most, though, is the uncertainty about when (or whether) the war will end. He grows late-ripening obaideh grapes near Baalbek, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is threatened by Israeli shelling. Last fall, Harb spent days coordinating pickers and drivers, but harvesting became too risky. “We’d get a call at four in the morning telling us there were ongoing bombardments,” he says. “I’ve thought to myself, ‘I don’t feel traumatized,’ but that’s delusional. Of course I am.”

The trials of the past year have only strengthened the winemaker’s resolve. At age 42, he has endured decades of war in Lebanon, losing his father in one of them. “I still would give anything to stay here and raise my child,” he says. “I would never leave this land.”