From Our Fields: Grapes and Vine Leaves
The vine gives twice — leaves in spring, fruit in late summer.
## One Vine, Two Harvests
A grapevine is generous. Long before the fruit arrives, the young leaves are ready — and in Lebanon, tender vine leaves (warak enab) are their own prize, picked in spring while they are still soft enough to roll.
We pick ours young, by hand. A good vine leaf is thin, pliable, and free of the toughness that sets in once the season runs on. Get the timing right and you have the base for one of the country's defining dishes.
## Then the Grapes
The fruit follows in late summer. We grow table grapes — the kind you eat off the bunch — picked when the sugar is up and the skin still snaps.
Grapes are easy to get wrong on a long supply chain: picked underripe to survive transport, they never catch up. Grown close and picked ripe, they taste the way a grape is supposed to.
## Why We Bother
It would be easier to just buy and resell. We grow the vine because it lets us pick the leaf at the right week and the fruit at the right ripeness — two things you cannot fix after the fact.