Moroccan Wines: a Pleasant Surprise for Foreign Visitors

While Morocco is renowned worldwide for its Argan products, its cuisine and unique culture, the country’s offering of amazing wines often surprise most visitors.

Rabat – While Morocco is renowned worldwide for its Argan products, its cuisine and unique culture, the country’s offering of amazing wines often surprise most visitors. A recent report by Euronews reporter James Clarke described how local wines were far from his expectations of Morocco.

“My imagination was filled with images of souks and cafes. But alcohol, and in particular wine, did not feature in my pre-Moroccan trip fantasy,” Clark writes, echoing an experience many visitors experience. Clarke’s fascination with the wines produced by Domaine du Val D’Argan near Essaouira represent only a fraction of Morocco’s world-class wines.

As a predominantly Muslim nation, Morocco is not generally associated with locally produced fine wine. Many visitors expect the offering of alcoholic beverages in the country to extend to the same imports seen at hotels around the world. Yet in Morocco, local wines are not to be missed by connoisseurs of fine wines.

Morocco is Africa’s second largest wine exporter after South Africa, as the combination of a generous sun and rich agricultural land provide the optimal condition for wine production. Moroccan wine production is as old as civilization itself, dating back to the era of Phoenician explorers and the Roman empire.

Today, Morocco’s massive wine industry is blossoming, featuring vast vineyards around Meknes, Essaouira, and Benslimane that reproduce rich and flavorful wines that compete in quality with some of the world’s most famous wine-producing countries.

In his piece for Euronews, Clarke comments that the wines he sampled “perfectly complemented the Moroccan vegetables and chickpeas tagine, couscous, and succulent barbecued meats.” For those traveling to Morocco amid its tourism revival, visiting the country’s vineyards or simply sampling its offering of wines in one of its historic cities, Moroccan wines are not to be missed.