Bacchus was here. Lebanon and the ancient roots of wine.

Seven thousand years of wine

Peter's guide is Michael Karam, a journalist and Lebanese wine expert, whom he finally finds in two kilometers of Roman-era caves now used as a wine cellar. Michael explains that the Lebanese have been associated with fermented grape juice for some 7,000 years. The modern industry began in 1857, when Jesuits in the Bekaa Valley, wanting to make dry wine, brought Grenache, Cinsault and Carignan from Algeria.

Lebanon even appears in the Bible: the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine, is linked by tradition to Qana in southern Lebanon. Current thinking places the very first winemaking in Georgia and the Caucasus. But, as Michael says, if the Lebanese did not invent wine, they were the first wine merchants.

Cedars, Phoenicians and Byblos

Lebanon's great cedar forests, now much reduced, built the ships of the Phoenicians, the ancient seafaring traders of this coast. At the height of their trading empire, roughly 1300 to 300 BC, they traded purple dye, glass, olive oil and wine from Byblos, said to be the oldest continuously inhabited town on earth and the birthplace of the alphabet. Byblos wine was, in Michael's words, the Grand Cru of the ancient world.

Phoenician traders carried wine and wine culture across the Mediterranean, to Greece, Italy, France, Spain and beyond. Archaeologists have even found a commercial wine press from Phoenician times with grape seeds still on its floor. Centuries later, the French returned the favor: after the First World War, thousands of thirsty French soldiers and officials helped revive Lebanese winemaking.

Chateau Musar and Serge Hochar

One of Peter's first stops is Château Musar, made famous by the late Serge Hochar, a brilliant evangelist for Lebanese wine who died in 2014. Gaston Hochar and winemaker Tarek Sakr take Peter into a cellar holding millions of bottles, 18 meters underground and cool and humid all year.

They taste a 2001 white made from the native grapes Merwah and Obeideh. Tarek describes Merwah as the wild grape of Mount Lebanon, bringing acidity and purity, while Obeideh adds structure. The red is a blend of roughly equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault and Carignan, a formula Serge settled on in 1977, aged for years before and after bottling. When should you drink it? Hear Tarek's memorable answer.

The locked room

Then there is a mysterious, cobweb-covered door to a room holding wines from 1933 to 1972, opened only with a key kept by the family. Peter is allowed in alone, searching for the very first vintage of Château Musar. See what he finds among the dusty bins, and why such long-aged bottles are central to this style of complex, characterful wine.

Peter notes how rare it is, even in the classic regions of the wine world, to find a cellar stocked with so many quietly maturing bottles. Cool, damp, humid conditions like these let fine wine develop slowly, gaining character and becoming a piece of history in its own right.

Baalbek: the greatest monument to wine

The journey ends at Baalbek in the northern Bekaa Valley, once a bread basket of the Roman empire, where the Temple of Bacchus stands among some of the greatest Roman ruins outside Italy. Michael calls it probably the greatest monument to wine in the world. Its carvings celebrate the cycle of life, plenty and famine, and the cult of Bacchus was known for wild celebration.

For Peter, standing beneath its vast carved doorway feels like a wine pilgrimage. Watch to see how Lebanon earned its place at the heart of wine history, and how its wines survived centuries of conflict.