On the 100th anniversary of Max Schubert’s birthday, Philip White remembers another quiet winemaking hero who departed at the New Year.

In the break between Christmas and New Year, there was tickle of rocketry and tankfire during a macho bristle on the border of Lebanon. Somebody let something off; not many were killed.

Phew.

But I was worried. Whenever this shit happens, there are those in the inner sanctum of the international wine community who think immediately of Serge Hochar and his family, who make the gorgeous wines of Château Musar in the Bekaa Valley north of the Golan.

The stylish, but impish Serge was Decanter magazine’s inaugural winemaker of the year in 1984.

Serge Hochar. Photo supplied

While this award has since become pretty much the world’s biggest wine gong, not one of the subsequent recipients can match the citation given Serge, who in that year moved his grapes right across the wide valley from the kilometre-high vineyards in the east to the winery at Ghazir in the west, between the wedding town of Cana “way south” and the Roman temples to Jupiter, Venus and Bacchus at Baalbeck just north.

If I followed the gospel of my old man the preacher, I’d say the Maronite Christian Serge made wine at the gates of Heaven AND Hell. And sometimes, contrary to the shrugging-off typical of Serge, the winemaking did seem miraculous.

The incessant tank cannon, rocket and machine-gun fire that peppered that slow 1984 convoy assured the fruit was a half-fermented mess by the time it eventually made the winery. Given Serge’s determined refusal to buckle, he insisted on making something from it anyway. He eased it through the stills with some anise and made a fine arak.

Max Schubert, who would have turned 100 yesterday, was another Decanter winemaker of the year. Like Serge, Max made wine under adversity, although his had nothing on Serge.

While they never met, these men shared a stubborn determination: whatever the conditions, they made wine.

Max Schubert, 1982. Photo Milton Wordley

The extreme mindless violence Max survived in the war in North Africa was partly responsible for his determination to do something constructive and lasting should he ever get safely home.  Thus came Grange. When the horrible management ladies in Sydney ordered that he cease its production, there was no more chance of Max  obeying than there was of Serge missing a vintage.

Apart from their shared predilection for impeccable suits and contrasting shards of thirsty wit and mischief, both men had a passion for red wines of extreme longevity and deep, comforting soulfulness, regardless of the fashionable fads and whims of their day.

Only a very lucky few will remember wines like Max’s Penfolds Bin 426 Shiraz Ouillade 1969, which was that ingenious winemaker blending a red designed to be a touch more approachable in its youth than the mighty Grange, which was built to go 30 years or more. That 426 was no Beaujolais, but it was a perfectly soft and soulful balm from its release through a decade or two, given the cork.

The softness, the bit Max called “mother wine”, was the red grape Ouillade, otherwise known as Cinsault or Blue Imperial. Like its north-western Mediterranean kin, Carignan, this grew a lot around the Barossa until the wine industry idiots of the day – you know who you are – conspired to have those priceless old bush vines destroyed during the Labor government’s triumph of heritage terrorism, the mid-’80s Vine Pull Scheme.

With the advent of consumer fascination in red blends after the south of France and Spain styles, we see frontrunning vignerons sensibly planting both these varieties today. In suitably modest volumes.

Which makes perfect sense. We have the best Mediterranean climate on Earth, but it’ll take the new pioneers some time to work out all this very old stuff.

Serge came from a French line of Crusaders. He joked about “coming to Lebanon 1000 years ago”, and while I never visited him in Beirut, I have heard many accounts from those few who did of his determination never to acknowledge the thump of heavy weaponry.

Especially during coffee, arak, chocolate or wine.

I shall never forget him suggesting with a quiet, Max-like giggle that the punks and bohemians in The Exeter Hotel were more scary than his hometown. He sat through that, too. We had fun.

The principal Château Musar red is a blend of Cabernet sauvignon, Cinsault and Carignan. Bits of Grenache and Mourvèdre (aka Monastrelle and Mataro) sometimes find their way in; the percentages are never revealed. Like much of Max’s red, the wine is fermented in thick waxed concrete fermenters. Once dry, the wine goes into French oak for a year before blending and being returned to old seasoned oak for maturation. The wine quietly enters the market around four years after bottling. It will bloom over decades of cool cellaring.

The last time I drank Serge’s wine was at my birthday last year. You can read my reviews here – I put them up with a red blend made by John Gilbert, another winemaker who shares an innate understanding of the “mother wine” soulfulness both Serge and Max engaged in all their winemaking. I shall review some more of his By Jingo wines soon.

Anyway, on the holidays, when that rattle of death machinery came out of my twitter, the cross hairs of my yearning wound straight round toward Serge and his family.

To no avail. Belatedly celebrating his 75th birthday, which was back in November, Serge was with his family, enjoying a New Year’s diving expedition off Acapulco when he died in an accident.

Like Max: in the end, the horrible people never got him.

There are many winemakers currently rebelling against the bland sanitised industrial wines Australia pumps out in oceans. Max is long gone, but you can still taste the spirit of Serge. His sons Gaston (winemaking) and Marc (management) have been running the business for years, but Serge and his stylish, impish wit rise soothing from every glass.

You can buy Château Musar wines – two reds and white – through Negociants Australia. The top red is very much of the style that Penfolds made in Max’s day. The junior red is very modern towards the natural manner, the rich dry white verging on today’s fashionable orange.

Nothing new about that sort of retro stuff on the track from Cana to Baalbeck.

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