In 1930, aged just 20, Gaston Hochar founded Château Musar, inspired by Lebanon's 6,000-year winemaking tradition and his travels in Bordeaux. His "wines with nobility" greatly impressed the senior army officers serving under the French Mandate of the 1920s. Major Ronald Barton of Château Langoa-Barton, stationed in Lebanon during the Second World War, became a close friend, strengthening the ties between Château Musar and Bordeaux that remain to this day.
Serge Hochar, Gaston's elder son, trained as a civil engineer, then decided to study oenology and, encouraged by his father, became a student of Émile Peynaud at the Bordeaux Institute of Oenology. Having told his father, "I want to make wine my way, I want it to be known all over the world, and I want you to step aside!", he became Chateau Musar's winemaker in 1959, and Gaston senior graciously gave way. He then spent 18 years perfecting the formula for Chateau Musar Red. He was named Decanter magazine's first "Man of the Year" in 1984 for his dedication to producing outstanding wines during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). Serge had two sons:
Gaston and Marc. Both studied engineering and worked in banking. Gaston now ran the day-to-day operation of Chateau Musar, and Marc its commercial side.
"My brother looked after the liquid, I look after the liquidity." Like his brother Serge, Ronald Hochar was encouraged to join Musar from an early age: both grew up washing bottles and working in the cellar before taking separate paths within the business. Ronald would work from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Ghazir and then in the evenings at the Musar shop in Beirut. "We were paid 5 Lebanese pounds a day," says Ronald. "I learned everything about sales from my father." After studying law, Ronald's good-humoured contributions on the commercial and logistics fronts (against enormous odds, he kept the Musar trucks running during the war) remain vital to the business. Ronald's son Ralph worked in sales in the UK until early 2017 and is now focusing on South-East Asia from Chateau Musar's UK office, and his daughter Elsa produced a documentary film about Chateau Musar.
