While I love botrytis in a dessert wine and savory/nutty/saline in a Fino, I was expecting neither in a “rose”. That said, faults or intentional, I found the wine intriguing and shockingly pleasurable.
I’m flabbergasted you could get botrytis in that climate
Good point. It would be more accurate to describe it as “honey” on the nose. Possibly a characteristic of the indigenous white varietals Obaideh or Merwah?
To my best understanding, there should be no botrytis whatsoever in Musar. And those indigenous white varieties Obaideh and Merwah are better known as Chardonnay and Sémillon to us non-Lebanese.
I tasted a Musar Rosé (I believe it was 2015) at a Musar tasting last week and I did not notice any botrytis but thought that there were clear traces of ‘Brett’, which I also considered to be special for a rosé wine. Brett in Musar wines is not uncommon.
I did like the wine. It definitely is not a standard rosé wine.
The 2016 is clean and pure. I like it
Taste a bit like Snapple, though
Several of us had a dinner with a few Musar wines a couple months back. Some of the conversation was around how long it can take for the grapes to get from the vineyard to the winery, especially when there is shooting going on. One report was they can sit around for as long as two weeks! So nothing would surprise me about what might what might be growing in any Musar wine 