TN: 2016 Chateau Musar Rosé

  • 2016 Chateau Musar Rosé - Lebanon, Bekaa Valley (8/11/2019)
    This is more of a pale rosé in color. Initially scents of watermelon, yellow delicious apples, and nectarine are noted. On the palate this is light as flavors of white peach, kiwi, and melon persist and transition into a lingering finish. It’s chalky, but there is twinge os candied sweetness that I really love, before it transitions back into a dry finish with persistent notes of peach & melon. Outstanding!!

Posted from CellarTracker

Sounds yummy!

Great wine. And can easily age a decade.

Call it a poor man’s LdH Rosado

I’ve had the '95 of this…and that’s the benchmark for aged rosé for me. You may have to do the aging…but these babies can last. However, as good as this was, I’m going to have a hard time not drinking the last three bottles of this that I have.

Maine’s only 12 hours away by car—I don’t have to go into work tomorrow, do I?

Have only had the rose once. Loved it.

Funny, I’ve always paid more for the Musar Rose than the LdH Rosado.

Otto, which do you prefer and why?

Well, out of the three Musar Rosés I’ve had, two of them have been lightstruck (stuffy, woolly, skunky) but the remaining one was very lovely, precise and thoroughly enjoyable. However, all three have been very young and I have no experience with older vintages.

I’ve had the LdH Rosado 2008 a few times and 2000 once, and they’ve been consistently great - save for one time immediately after release when the 2008 was very closed and somehow musty, as if corked, only without any overt TCA character. People in the tasting agreed that the wine was not corked, but not sound and chalked up to being just tested too early. All the following bottles of 2008 have been great.

Even though I’m a hardcore Musarist, I must admit I prefer the LdH pink over the Musar one.

Then you’re a lucky man, Otto.

I dare you to find an LdH Rosado currently that is less expensive dive than Musar Rose.

Currently, the only bottles available in the US are 4-6x the price of Musar, and if you go to LdH, they will only sell you one bottle as part of a six pack with the Tondonia Reserva at inflated prices compared to US retail.

Well, both the Musar Rosé and LdH are starting to be pretty unavailable by now due to the small production volumes. You just have to grab them while you can. Of course the prices go up once the stocks run dry.

However, the US prices seem to be quite inflated for so many wines. I’ve paid something like 25-27€ ($28-30) for all my LdH Rosados, whereas the Musar Rosés have been consistently around 35€ ($40-ish).

2016 Chateau Musar Rosé - Lebanon, Bekaa Valley (8/14/2020)
– cork pulled approx. 1.5 hours before initial taste –
– tasted non-blind over 2 - 3 hours –

NOSE: corn tortilla chips; chalk; watermelon.

BODY: light orange-pink color; {forgot to note wine’s weight}

TASTE: 12% alc. not noticeable; behaves like a very light red wine; very light cherry seltzer water; something was kind of odd about this wine — don’t know exactly what it was, but something that rubbed me the wrong way. Not nearly as good as the astounding 2006 vintage of the same. Have one more bottle and will probably sit on it awhile to see if it transforms into something more to my liking.

It’s always dangerous to compare the relative prices of imported wines here and in Europe because different importers quite clearly have different mark-ups. But if LdH Rosado costs even nearly what Otto says, the situation here is FUBAR. The LdH Rosado, on Winesearcher starts at $100 a bottle. The Musar 2016 Rosè is more like $42. So, it seems, both Otto and Noah are correct about relative prices–relative to where they are.