The return of arak

The New York Times
Jan 25, 2005

ZABBUGHA, Lebanon
It was a sunny morning in this hamlet high above the Mediterranean, one warm enough for walking in shirt sleeves amid the blooms of purple morning-glories. But the fresh mountain air was slightly moist with a hint of pending winter rains and the earthy ferment of mash.
Yes that kind of mash. Vineyards surround the 60 white stone houses here, and in sheds behind a third of the homes older men were firing up their copper stills. A rite of the grape harvest in the Christian villages dotting the Lebanon mountain range (and occasionally in Muslim villages, despite Islam¹s taboo against alcohol) is the perfectly legal distillation of homemade arak.
This smooth, cool, refreshing liquor, tasting of licorice with a soupçon of peppermint, remains the staple drink at Sunday lunch, an eat-till-you-drop extravaganza of small meze dishes.
"There are drinks to get you drunk, and there are drinks to be savored with food," said George Haiby, a trim 67-year-old retired manager at the port of Beirut, pausing from his labor in a cramped, smoky concrete shed where he was feeding twigs into the flames under a blackened copper still. "Arak from the village is like the sons of the village: pure. If you use good grapes, if you keep the entire process clean, if you distill the mash well, if you use good aniseed, everyone can make good arak."
Fans claim that arak (the name is sometimes transliterated as arrack) is the sole drink to accompany meze, which relies heavily on lemon and tangy spices. Wine and whiskey tend to clash with the myriad flavors, while arak washes the taste buds, refreshing the palate for each new dish: bitter olives, dewy goat¹s cheese, radishes, tabbouleh, raw minced lamb, zucchini with cinnamon, potatoes in coriander, mashed eggplant with garlic or chicken livers in pomegranate juice, to name just a few.
Arak, especially the artisanal or village variety, is undergoing something of a revival in Lebanon. Like the country itself, the drink suffered a tangible corrosion during the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. The question now is just how much of an appetite exists for the drink among a younger generation wooed away by wine, beer, whiskey and sake.
The problem, arak producers say, is that the start of the war in 1975 coincided with the arrival in Lebanon of new machines that let producers throw any old mash at one end (fermented molasses from beet roots was popular), along with a little chemical anise flavoring, and ‹ presto! ‹ a dubious distillation spewed out the other end, to be sold as arak.
Its coarseness often caused blinding headaches. But with the old arak distilleries in downtown Beirut largely bombed out and shells whizzing overhead, consumers were not particularly discriminating. Any cheap sedative would do.
After the war many producers kept churning out their rotgut, and consumers abandoned arak in droves. Lebanese producers also lost their most important export market when Iraqis began drinking locally made arak (distilled from dates) after their currency collapsed under economic sanctions.
The revival of arak¹s fortunes can be traced partly to the return of two brothers, Sami and Ramzi Ghosn. Like many producers, the Ghosns, who are now in their late 30s, were primarily interested in making wine after reclaiming the Bekaa Valley estate their family had been chased off during the war.
When they began work 10 years ago, they made a few small batches of fine arak in a borrowed still, selling it under their Massaya label. Buyers asked for more. Given their business skills (Ramzi has an MBA from the University of Chicago) they decided there might be a niche market. They hired German designers to create a tall, skinny dark blue bottle that other producers mocked.
"They thought it was a joke, considering us amateurs," Ramzi recalled. "They said: ŒYou aren¹t producing arak. You¹re producing perfume!"¹
But capitalizing on the Lebanese thirst for all things chic helped resurrect a market that many thought was dying. Recently Ramzi drove to the Tripoli bazaar to buy two 500-pound, or 225-kilogram, brass stills, which will double Massaya¹s capacity, to some 60,000 bottles annually.
The origins of arak remain obscure, although aniseed-flavored liquor distilled from grapes exists in some form all around the Mediterranean. The Turks quaff raki, the Greeks ouzo, the Italians sambuca and the French pastis. Lebanese Christians readily ascribe any obscure specialty to the Phoenician ancestors they claim to descend from.
The only certainty is that the Arabs developed alcohol, the very word for it coming from their language, along with expressions for parts of the process of making it, including alembic, which means still in English, French (alambic) and Arabic. Arak is also the Arabic word for sweat, evidently reflecting the way the refined droplets gather in the tubes before dripping out of the still.
The process parallels that of Cognac production, except that aniseed is added for the flavor. But each family jealously guards its own distillate¹s eccentricities.
The process starts with the fermentation of grapes, preferably white, for roughly three weeks. Then each batch of mash is distilled at least three times over a wood or gas fire to reach a smooth middle proof. Green, chewy aniseed from Syria is added to the third round.
The current must-have arak for the cognoscenti is that of Joseph Bitar, an 81-year-old former Lebanese Army general who distills his Arak Kfifane five times, and more slowly than most.
In 1991 Bitar and his wife, Denise, inherited a vineyard in the village Kfifane. Bitar had abandoned drinking harsh commercial arak and was determined to make his own. The couple found an old man in the village who once worked for an artisanal commercial distillery and asked him for the recipe. "He started to cry, that someone had actually asked how to do it," Bitar recalled.
When mixed with water Arak Kfifane turns snowy white, like yogurt, a sure sign of smoothness, Bitar said.
Arak lovers argue endlessly about the correct proportion of arak to water and ice. (I prefer one-quarter to one-third arak.) Most restaurants serve arak with a little alp of three-inch-high glasses, as true fans would not dream of having more than two drinks before changing glasses, because whatever oil is left in the arak forms a thin film on the glass and, as the lore has it, causes hangovers. Arak makers also extol arak¹s holistic properties, claiming that aniseed aids digestion and relaxation. But it is, after all, an alcoholic drink (around 53 percent), and a long lunch can leave one inebriated. Diluting it with water brings the alcohol content to something roughly between that of wine and vodka.
Back in Zabbugha, Haiby repeated a village axiom about the native beverage. "The first glass is for medicinal purposes, the second glass makes you happy and with the third you eat the wind," he said, using a Lebanese expression for someone who blathers without cease.
Little wonder then why a Sunday lunch splashed with arak stretches easily into a five-hour affair

source: The New York Times