I was running late to the Tunisian Wine Tasting Club’s degustation when my phone buzzed with a frantic message from my father.
“Wine does not go well with Tunisians! You do not want to smell like you had a drink, especially in a cab at night! Writing about wine may raise red flags for future interviews!”
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“This is Tunisia,” I texted back, “not Iran.”
Despite all the teetotaling stereotypes associated with Muslim countries, alcohol consumption is as common as couscous. Over two million Tunisians consume millions of bottles of beer, wine, pastis, whiskey, and vodka on a regular basis; their drinking habits are protected and regulated by the Trade Association of Producers of Alcoholic Beverages (CSPBA).
Though beer, following the country’s quantity over quality alcohol ethos, is the preferred beverage of choice amongst drinkers, winemaking has its place in Tunisian history. Tunisians have been growing grapes and distilling alcohol for the past 3,000 years; Carthaginian agriculturist Mago wrote texts explaining in precise detail how to plant and prune vines, and make the BCE era’s best passum (raisin wine). In 2014, Tunisians gulped down 14.3 million bottles of the good stuff.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Tunisia is North Africa’s Côte-du-Rhone. A bit (a lot) of discretion is advised, and alcohol purchases must be planned ahead of time. Most neighborhood shops don’t carry booze, so you must head to the grandes surfaces (except on Fridays and during Ramadan, when the alcohol sections are shuttered) to purchase your bottles of Magon and Clos de Carthage, two brands that are Tunisia’s answer to Yellow Tail. They’re drinkable wines—certainly more so than a rosé I sipped one balmy June night that tasted exactly like salad dressing.
A bit (a lot) of discretion is advised, and alcohol purchases must be planned ahead of time. Most neighborhood shops don’t carry booze, so you must head to the grandes surfaces to purchase Magon and Clos de Carthage, two brands that are Tunisia’s answer to Yellow Tail.
There was no vinegar on the menu at the Tunisian Wine Tasting Club, a social group recently established for Tunis-based oenophiles. The club brings together a mix of foreign diplomats, UN workers, oil contractors, plastic surgeons, and full-time high-society people, united by a love, or at least vague interest, in wine.
Most of the time, member Rym Jalali notes, the members are limited to whatever duty-free imports they’ve brought back from recent trips abroad. Expectations must thus be slightly lowered when the goods are confined to the spirits section of Terminal B. At the January gathering, for example, Asian wines were sampled; this included two bottles of rather plebian Jacob’s Creek from Australia.
I was lucky that the February meeting focused on Tunisian wines, and that it was held at the Dutch ambassador’s palatial residence; the location rotates between the club members. I spent a brief, if somewhat surreal moment on the terrace chatting with the ambassador about the sand diamonds he foraged on family camping trips during his diplomatic posting in Saudi Arabia before we were all ushered inside. We walked past an official portrait of the Dutch king and queen to a large room, where the furniture had been pushed aside to make space for two long, white tables crowded with empty wine glasses and bread baskets.
“I’m very pleased to announce that Ludovic Pochard is here!” the ambassador’s wife said brightly, giving the floor to the French-born manager of Kurubis, one of ten in-country vineyards.
As most producers, Pochard’s vineyards are situated on Cap Bon, a fertile peninsula jutting out into the Mediterranean; the mineral soil and strong sun are ideal for growing vines. I sat between a fellow journalist and the Canadian wife of a WindStar executive. (“You’ll have to ask my husband, I’m afraid,” she said politely when I tried to quiz her on Tunisian oil production over a glass of Soltane Blanc.)
For the next two hours, Ludovic walked us through six different wines: a sparkling rosé, two whites, two reds, and a small, stout glass of perfectly balanced dessert wine. Glasses were tilted, nostrils were flared, and remarks were exchanged in a mix of Arabic, French, Dutch, and English. People jotted down notes on the paper placemats (notes are later circulated to the group in a monthly email blast). The wines were solidly good; there was a particularly nice young white that smelled very faintly of seawater.
Still, the wine club is as much about oenology as it is a social gathering—the only person I could see spitting out their wine after a palate swish was Ludovic, the rest of us knocked everything back and happily went back for more after the tasting. The party really began to kick off when the ambassador’s wife announced that two of Tunisia’s best tango dancers would be regaling us with a private performance.
A waiter made the rounds, offering us piping hot plates of bitterballen, a deep-fried Dutch speciality, as the tango dancers twirled sensuously around us. “Do you dance?” a Libya-based diplomat asked me, seriously overestimating my athletic abilities. I excused myself to go refill my wine glass and remind myself I was still, somehow, in Tunisia.
The wine club has festive events planned for the rest of 2016 (chardonnay and ‘cab sauv’ will be sampled in mid-March), but for Pochard and other winemakers, the future of Tunisian wine looks dim. Following the terrorist attacks last year on the Bardo Museum and a beach resort in Sousse, tourism has dropped drastically, slowing down sales to hotels, clubs, and restaurants.
In a further blow to the industry, the Tunisian government amended the Finance Law for 2016 (link in French), introducing a new decree that decreased taxes on hard alcohol (both imported and domestic) from 650 percent to 50 percent.
In Tunisia, the wine and beer sector employs tens of thousands of farmers, transporters, and factory workers. Winemakers are worried they might have to buy less grapes from Tunisian viticulturists, forcing them to rip out vines, as the cost of cultivation surpasses sales.
Opponents of the decree worry that the tantalizingly low prices on spirits will alter market sales, encouraging Tunisians to buy strong liqueurs over beer and wine. A bottle of pastis with a 45 percent alcohol content is taxed at 2.500 DT ($1.25) and goes for 15 DT ($7.50). Wine, with a 12.5 percent alcohol content is taxed at 1.350 ($.70), is sold for 13 DT ($6). If inebriation is the goal, the math is simple.
“It’s scandalous,” Pochard said at the tasting.
The new decree is counter to how most governments set prices: soft alcohols, like beer and wine, are taxed low compared to high-alcohol content drinks. This is in part to counter the associated health and societal risks that come with hard drinking. In France, for example, wine is taxed at 3.77 euros per HL, while rum is taxed at 1737.56 euros per HL.
“This will be catastrophic to our sector,” the incised president of the CSPBA said at a recent press conference.
In Tunisia, the wine and beer sector employs tens of thousands of farmers, transporters, and factory workers. Winemakers are worried they might have to buy less grapes from Tunisian viticulturists, forcing them to rip out vines, as the cost of cultivation surpasses sales.
“This law is incomprehensible,” the president continued furiously. “I don’t know who the government is trying to favor here.” Beer sales have already slipped 60 percent in January; wine sales are expected to decline as well.
Pochard is equally concerned.”It’s a loss of historic culture and Tunisian culinary patrimony,” he laments.
