From Biblical to revival: Jordan's desert winemakers

Two Jordanian families aim to put wine from their desert land on the world viticultural map, reviving an age-old tradition that some suggest has Biblical heritage.

Wine lovers like to say that the wine Jesus Christ served to his disciples at the Last Supper came from the northern town of Umm Qais in modern-day Jordan, to signify how old the country's winemaking tradition is.

"Wine was produced in Jordan more than 2,000 years ago but then it disappeared for centuries," said Omar Zumot, who studied winemaking in France, and now manages the Saint George winery in an eastern suburb of Amman.

"It's our responsibility to relaunch it," he told AFP.

The Zumots and their main competitors, the Haddads, belong to Jordan's Christian minority in a Muslim-majority kingdom, where the sale of alcohol is legal.

"We began to produce wine in 1996 and today we produce 400,000 litres a year," Zumot said, during a tour of his winery, which makes a range of organic wines that are aged in 700 French oak barrels before being bottled.

"We're only at the start of the road but my dream is to put Jordanian wines on the map."