Question #112033. Asked by author.
Last updated Jan 10 2017.
star_gazer
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star_gazer 23 year member
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The better restaurants in Tripoli often carry an array of meze-style salads, the highlight of which was usually eggplant dishes. Arab salad, a mixture of chopped cucumber, tomato, bell peppers and parsley, followed the soup. Then there was usually a plate of stewed lamb or chicken with rice, pasta or couscous. Dessert was invariably apples and bananas. Alcohol is banned in Libya, so forget a glass or wine or beer.
There was a thriving wine production in North African countries, mostly being exported to France, before they gained their independence. Since then, wineries and vineyards tumbled down and production diminished to almost a shadow of what it formerly was. It is difficult to imagine that North African countries produced a third of the worlds wine output in the 1950s.
There are some attempts to recover some of the former glory, taking advantage of climatic conditions and mature vineyards, but the Muslim background –where alcohol consumption is forbidden- of the North African countries weighs down heavily on local consumption, and, apart from a few tourist outlets, the only output for North African wine is getting out of the area.
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia were major wine producers until recently. Libya less so, but wine used produced in the Cyrenaica district at least until the 1940s/50s.