A VINE ROMANCE

 

« I’ve got pomegranate ! »

Omar Zumot, Jordanian entrepreneur and winemaker, beams across the table, stopping me in a mid-sentence. Pomegranate ? I take a second to think, and then let another sip of the dark, ruby-red wine swirl around my mouth. He’s right. I close my eyes and allow my tatse buds to message my brain. He’s spot on. Pomegranate. It feels like a weight off the shoulders just to be sure.

Wine tasting, as Zumot says, can be painfull. He should know : as his country’s premier winemaker, he is on a self-declared mission to put Jordanian wine on the map – and it is often a struggle. Almost 15 years after single-handedly creating Jordan’s first commercial vineyards – and with a respectable range of good quality wines to his name – he still faces a wall of ignorance, sometime even mockery, from the wine establishment.

A 2007 story by the news agency AFP epitomises the stance, discussing Arab wine in terms of  »Château Migraine », Omar Zumot is laughing.  »This is my greatest concern », he says,  »the reputation of Jordanian wine. »
Currently meriting barely a paragraph in most wine encyclopedias, Jordan is one handfull of Middle Eastern wine producers that claim biblical origins for their wine industries. After a gap of a millennium, production began again in the 19th century in Lebanon and Palestine, both influenced by French expertise. With consumption of alcohol forbidden to Muslims, their separate industries were developed in Lebanon by Christians, and in Palestine (later Israel) by Jews. Both countries now dominate the region’s winemaking. Lebanon producing around 150,000 hectolitres annually and Israel almost 60,000.

By contrast, according to figures from the US-based Wine Institute, Jordan accounts for around 5,000 hectolitres. Annual cosumption totals just 0,1 litres per capita -compared with 1,1 in Israel or 3,5 in Lebanon- yet that conceals the fact that most Jordanian wine is consumed by non-Jordanians, chiefly tourists.

Zumot’s Grands Vin de Jordanie brand includes the Saint George range – a Merlot, a Shiraz, a Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, and other blends – alongside a Chardonnay/Sauvignon Blanc blend labelled Machareus. They compete with the bright Mount Nebo whites and the varied Jordan River range produced by Eagle, part of the local Haddad group.

Yet for a nation that is 95 percent Muslim to have a wine industry at all speak volumes. In Zumot’s words :  »Jordan is an Islamic country where you can make wine ; how much more tolerant could you get ? »
He takes me to one of his three vineyards, at Sama as Sahran, northeast of Amman on the Syrian border. This is frontier land -dry, bleak and windblown. To the esat yawns an open wilderness of stony desert, while the north looms the bulk of Syria’s Jabal ad-Duruz, an extinct volcano that -at some point in antiquity- spewed fields of basaltic lava over this landscape. It is a most unlikely place to see vineyards.
 »This is the last parcel of pre-desert land » Zumot says.  »We chose partly for the soil -it’s basalt. While digging I noticed a new layer avery half metre. I thought it would be good to bring a mineral flavour to the Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc grapes, and we’ve had amazing results. »

As we stroll between the vines, Zumot, 43, explains his background. Born in Amman into an old Christian family from Jerusalem -his father, Bulos, founded the Zumot Company in 1954 and is still working today, at the age of 79- Omar started training in accountancy at 14. In 1988 he spotted a gapin the market and began exporting gin and arak (a local aniseed spirit) to Iraq, and made his first million within a year. When the Iraqi market crashed under sanctions in the mid-1990s, he launched a foodstuffs entreprise -chiefly importing and ditributing potato crisps- wich remains the mainstay of his business. But he has returned to his first love .

 »I always wanted to be involved with wine. At 19 I went to France to study winemaking at a monastry in the Ardèche -but I was young and stupid, and I spent years procrastinating. Then, in 1996, I started planting. »
I ask what his philosophy is on winemaking.  »You can’t make money selling wine in Jordan  », he says. This is not a business ; it’s my passion. And I try not to intervene as much as possible. My whole operation is fertilizer-free and pesticide-free. I was advised to sparay against grape worm, but the birds steal the worms for me. They charge me -we lose 15 percent of the grapes to the birds- but this is nature ».
He shows me a large fishpond.  »I irrigatefrom here. It’s fed by a renewable aquifer from under the mountain, and the carp manure adds nitrate to the water. I allow sheep into the vineyards to trim dead shoots from the Merlot vines : they eat the weeds, fertilize the soil and their saliva disingects the vine trunks. My secret is really to produce as little as possible from each vine. We are yielding less than two tonnes of grapes per hectare [compared to a world average of 8,5] ».
So, with such a avowedly eco-friendly outlook, does he seek organic certification ? He shakes his head.
 »An organic wine isn’t a good wine -it’s just an organic wine. »
Nonetheless, his gentle approach appears to be working. The company produces almost 300,000 bottles a year and is beginning to get noticed. Zumot’s Saint George blend of Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon ( »You’d be arrested for doing that in France », he jokes) was called  »impressive and unconventional » by wine writer Robert Joseph.

I asked Harun Dursun, an international award-winning sommelier and executive assistant manager at Amman’s Grand Hyatt hotel, for his opinion.
 »The local market likes these butt-kicking wines », he says.  »They want them full-bodied, powerfull and fruity, with lots of tannins, to go with the pronounced flavours of the food. The finesse of a Pinot Noir tastes like water to them. »
The Hyatt, Dursun tells me, uses Jordanian wine as a marketing tool.  »We give away the Saint George free, on our club floor. And we get very good feedback : guests are consistently pleasently surprised. Justifiably so ; in my opinion the Saint George is above average globally -and regionally it is top. »

Zumot’s productionp plant lies in an unromantic industrial estate on the outskirts of Amman -discreetly unsigned, yet envelopped in a telltale aroma of delicious, heady sweetness, Omar gives me a tour.  »This is a Bucher -the Rolls-Royce of grape pressers », he beams, pushing up his glasses like an excited schoolboy.  »We don’t crush the grapes ; we just de-stem them before pressing. We lose a bit of juice in the skins, but that’s OK. And we don’t filter the wine ; we allow sedimentation to occur naturally -in oak barrels, handmade by Chassin in Burgundy. »

I am introduced to Iva Boyuklieva a,d Zdravko Markov, Bulgarian vintnerd who are working with Zumot to improve quality.  »We will grow with our wines », oenologist Boyuklieva confides.  »But already Jordan’s wines are better than some European wines. »

With that, Zumot seizes a bottle of his own wine -unnamed, unlabelled, drawn that day from the barrel and confidential in age, composition and potential commercial value -and we drive to the splendid old restaurant Haret al-Jdoudna (courtyard of our forefathers’) in Madaba, a historic market town southwest of Amman. The maitre d’hotel greets Zumot warmly, shows us to a quiet corner and, shortlu after, crowds our table with mezze -an array of salads, bite-sized pastries, hot and cold dips, grilled meats and freshly baked flat-bread, designed to delight the eye and nose as much as the stomach.

But we are here to work. It takes a good -a very good- half hour of sipping and sloshing our way through the mystery bottle before we light upon what exactly that clear, insistent note is on our tongues. Not citrus (too high, too acidic) and not anything curranty or berry-like (too full, to sweet). Finally, a synapse fires and Zumot plucks the magic word from the air. Pomegranate.
We grin at each other in somewhat muzzy triumph. Zumot pushes up his glasses again and gestures around, at the packed restaurant.  »It’s not only the freedom », he says,  »We have the culture. I love mycountry ! »

And we do the natural thing : we drink a toast.