Massaya was founded by brothers Sami and Ramzi Ghosn, whose family acquired farmland in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley in the early 1970s. Civil war forced the family to flee to the United States in 1975, but the brothers returned in the early nineties to reclaim and restore the property. What began as an effort to revive local traditions grew into one of Lebanon’s most recognized wine and spirits estates, eventually drawing partnerships with French winemaking families from Bordeaux and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
El Massaya is distilled from indigenous Obeïdi grapes grown on the estate’s Faqra property in Mount Lebanon, fermented with native yeast before undergoing triple distillation in copper pot stills built by the Tartoussi family in Tripoli and fired with vine wood. Fresh green aniseed, grown organically in the village of Hiné on the slopes of Mount Hermon, is macerated in the spirit ahead of its final distillation. The finished arak then rests for roughly a year or more in clay jars, a traditional aging method that softens the spirit without introducing any oak character.
The result is dense and robust, dominated by anise and licorice with underlying notes of dried fruit. Traditionally served diluted with cold water in roughly a one to two ratio, the spirit turns cloudy white through the process known as louching, opening up its full aromatic complexity as it’s poured.
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