Meet the Connoisseurs

Edmond Asseily and his brothers are fulltime fund-traders and Ziad Mouawad is a practicing medical doctor who recently moved back to Beirut from France. It was when he felt himself seriously challenged at the markets of Les Halles de Lyon that a mere leisure pursuit began to take a more serious turn.
‘Les Halles de Lyon is like a temple of French gastronomy; a syndicate of some of the finest merchants and producers in the world.’ When Mouawad found a stall going vacant at the market, he sought information about how to become part of it, only to be
greeted with ridicule. That did not hamper his perseverance and before the world knew it, Mouawad’s wine shop was up and running. Mouawad didn’t meet Asseily until he moved back to Beirut, naturally during a wine tasting session. ‘I have a decent wine collection of my own, but it doesn’t even compare to that of Edmond’s,’ Mouawad admits. ‘He’s got one of the best collections in the regions and possibly one of the finest Burgundy collections in the world.’ Asseily explains that there are mainly two types of wine collectors, the compulsive kind, addicted to piling up as many bottles of certain kinds of wine as possible and the ones that stick to gathering only certain bottles that are sometimes worth a fortune.
It is this type of collector that Asseily thinks of himself as. “My affair with wine started almost two decades ago. You fi nd yourself saying things like ‘I have to have it’,” says Asseily. ‘If you have a true passion for something, your passion has to keep progressing. The love of wine is not any different. Your knowledge keeps expanding and the sky’s the limit.’ Asseily would not disclose how much he has valued his collection at, but explains that the only way your expertise in wine develops is by tasting more and more fine wines. 'Your passion is not complete until you share it with others. Just as you cannot possibly enjoy a deserted island on your own, you cannot experience the optimal pleasure of a wine without sharing it. That’s where Edmond and I come in.’