Couvent Rouge

While the sun blisters down on the small village of Deir el Ahmar, Lebanon and bakes the intense terra rosa, a phalanx of half-meter-tall, browned plants poked up from the earth. This is the local, dry-farmed, and regionally infamous hashish. It’s what the local farmers have made a living off of for the last 70 to 80 years. But Walid Habchy, who’s lived here his entire life in this village, wanted to change that. While it’s illegal to grow hashish in Lebanon, the law is only intermittently enforced by the government. Raids, which come every few years, render growers penniless for that season. “No one is proud to grow hash,” Habchy confirms. He, along with other villagers like Charbel Fakhri, want to see drug-free, legal, and prosperous opportunities for future Lebanese generations. Their plan? The duo and their farming neighbors are working to transform the drug fields back into vineyards.

Wine’s importance in the Bekaa Valley is unmistakable. About 10 miles to the southeast of Deir el Ahmar, the pristine, 2,000-year-old Roman Temple of Bacchus sits amidst Baalbek—the Bronze Age ruins and city’s namesake. Galvanized by this history, Habchy and Fakhri helped dream up the Cooperative Coteaux d’Heliopolis, or Heliopolis Cooperative. It began as a union of growers who banded together to support the transformation. The name, “City of the Sun,” referenced Baalbek’s Hellenic identity. They planted the first five-hectare of vines in 2001. Five farmers began tending vines, and today, the cooperative includes 278 growers—each of whom cultivate around one hectare of vines.

Eleven years after the co-op’s inauguration, Habchy, Fakhri, and new partners like Eddie Chami opened Couvent Rouge winery. It’s the French translation of Deir el Ahmar, which also means Red Convent. This was a natural progression in creating larger pipelines to satisfy new vineyard plantings. Couvent Rouge not only purchases grapes from the cooperative for their wines, but since 2013, they’ve made a wine on the cooperative’s behalf called Coteaux Les Cèdres. Today, Deir el Ahmar is all but fully transitioned, but the cooperative has more work to do in the entire region where hashish still grows.

https://www.borderless.wine/couvent-rouge