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December 2020

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  To be honest, this wine did not come out of my boxes 'o Advent wine. I happened to be at a friend's for dinner and she served this with dessert. But I thought, why not include it? I did after all drink it during Advent. So that counts. Georgian wine has a growing popularity in Turkey. However, so far what we get here are European-style wines (i.e. not qvevri aged or skin contact) from the larger, factory wineries. And while Badagoni fits into that large-format category, their wine is not available in Turkey. This I think she got in the UK of all places - which apparently imports a

  Completely by coincidence did I include this bottle in my Advent boxes 'o wine. December has seen both #CabFrancDay (December 4) and a #WinePW Cabernet Franc around the world. Naturally I blogged about Turkish wine for both events. I've never had Cabernet Franc from France, or anywhere else in Europe. But what I've come to realize from these events is that Turkish Cabernet Franc leans more New World in style. The wines here don't have the high acidity and austere elegance of their European counterparts. Rather they display the riper fruit and structure of New World wines. Vino Dessera Cabernet Franc, 2018  It's been a long time since I've seen a

  The third white wine out of the Advent box o' wine yielded another import from South Africa - a Chenin Blanc. I've had this wine once or twice before and find it delightful. When the importer does a sale on it I usually buy one or two. And today I was so happy to have grabbed out this one as I have left over Indian food for dinner and suspect it will pair well with the wine. Jordan Bradgate Chenin Blanc, 2017 From Stellenbosch, South Africa, this is actually a blend of 87% Chenin Blanc and 13% Sauvignon Blanc. Appearance: bright lemon with pale green highlights Alcohol: 13.5% abv Nose: Love at first whiff! The

  No blind tasting for today, huzzah! That gives my brain a little bit of a break. If you read the title and thought to yourself: Sobran? Where in Piemonte is that? Well the answer is that it's not. In Piemonte. Nor is it in Valle d'Aosta nor in Lombardia or anywhere else in Italy. Sobran Bağları is a Turkish winery based in Alaşehir in the Aegean. This 2018 vintage was not only the winery's first release of Nebbiolo, but the first in Turkey. Sobran Bağları Nebbiolo, 2018 A family-run winery, Sobran Bağları started planting in 2007 eventually expanding from a small vineyard to 31 hectares that include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Öküzgözü,

  We celebrated #CabFrancDay on December 4. To keep the Cab Franc love going the December #WinePW theme explores Cabernet Franc Around the World! You can read the invitation post by host Wendy Klick from A Day In The Life on The Farm here. It will surprise no one that I am featuring Cabernet Franc from Turkey! Join us tomorrow, December 12 at 7pm IST/ 11am EST / 10am CST / 8am PST by following along with the #WinePW hashtag on Twitter as we talk all things Cab Franc! Cabernet Franc  Most probably know Cab Franc as a blending grape. In Bordeaux-style wines, Cab Franc may get blended with two of its offspring:

  The game is afoot! If my Sherlock (my cat) could speak Human that's likely what she'd have said to me this morning as I selected this bottle from the Advent boxes o' wine. Right before glaring disapprovingly at me. Does she disapprove because I'm drinking again? Or because I'm not paying 150% attention to her? That's anyone's guess. I have resigned myself to these these Dante Inferno-esque circles of Hell I've created for myself. Which means when I pulled out yet another disguised bottle this morning I sighed only a little. A modestly priced Turkish wine from a cool climate with moderate alcohol. It's either got a few years under

  This morning my box o' Advent wines offered up my first white wine blind tasting bottle. One of my preparations involved removing capsules from quite a few bottles. In some cases I did so to further disguise the wine within. For the blind tasting white wines I did it so I could mark the corks to indicate a white wine in need of refrigeration. We're having a warm snap in Istanbul. Which basically means we're back up to our usual early December temperatures of low mid teens (Celsius). So a white a white wine was very welcome today! My guess: moderate to cool climate, lightly oaked Sauvignon Blanc with

  I absolutely "cheated" today while selecting a bottle from my box 'o wine Advent calendar. When I determined which wines to earmark as blind tasting challenges I knew anything with a screwcap would immediately be a dead giveaway. Not feeling up to another blind tasting humiliation today, I felt around for a screwcap and came up with a South African Pinotage. From reading other blogs it seems that Pinotage is something of a controversial grape. There are a lot of haters out there. We don't see a lot of Pinotage in Turkey (although more than I would expect). From what I've had though I do rather like it. A crossing