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Red Wine

HomeRed Wine (Page 16)

  The last few weeks, I've posted about wineries like Likya and Saranta growing Öküzgözü outside of it's traditional home. This week, I'm making an about-face to talk about a winery using Öküzgözü from Elazığ. Uçmakdere.  With the Sea of Marmara lapping against the shore just a few steps from this family-run winery, the view here differs greatly from that in land-locked Elazığ. But the grapes were just as happy to be made into wine here after they arrived from their journey. In the winery they joined Syrah from Barbaros in Tekirdağ (which had a much shorter trip!). One of the first, if not the first vintage Uçmakdere produced, I don't

  Büyülübağ winery is located on the island Avşa in the Sea of Marmara. When the Istanbul-levelling earthquake people keep predicting finally comes, Avşa is where you want to be. The island's composition is pure granite down to the sea bed with decomposed granite soils. That island's going nowhere. While Büyülübağ does have Cabernet vineyards on the island, those grapes are used in the winery's wild ferment Cab. For the reserve line, the grapes come from Çeşme in the Aegean region. Çeşme has a much warmer climate and richer, more fertile soils resulting in bigger and bolder wines.  I've been lucky enough to have a number of older vintage reserve

  This year for October, the month of #MerlotMe, I did not have a lot of new wines to try. For the #WinePW event I paired Akın Gürbüz's new Winemaker Series Merlot with merguez sausages. Uçmakdere's Roze Merlot went with baked rosemary honey chicken, while two Merlots from Arda went with an amazing burrata eggplant dish.  For my final Merlot of the month, I opened Saranta's Chateau Murou Merlot and paired it with a plateful of nibbles. Saranta  Saranta is located in Turkey’s Thrace, just a stone’s throw from several other wineries on the Trakya Bağ Rotası (Thracian Wine Route). The majority of the winery's vineyards spread out around the winery and

  Last year for the #WinePW #MerlotMe event, I paired a late harvest, dry, Merlot by Arda and you can see that pairing here. Knowing that Arda makes several other Merlot wines, I got a couple to further explore for Merlober! Arda Arda Bağcılık is a boutique, family-run winery located near the historic town of Edirne. Established in 2007, the vineyards are overseen by family patriarch and winery founder Ilyas Saç. In true family business fashion everyone pitches in. Ilyas’ daughter Seniz is a trained oenologist and, along with Bulgarian expert Kamen Koev, serves as winemaker. His son Yavuz, a wine scholar, manages winery operations together with his wife Bahar. A

  It's Merlober! What else could the #WinePW group be exploring this month than that most divisive of grapes, Merlot? This month's host Jeff from Food Wine Click!, invitation post invited us all to join in the #MerlotMe celebration and sing the praises of this grape. You can read his invitation here. Join us on Saturday, October 9 at 8am PST / 11am EST / 6pm Istanbul time and join the discussion! Just follow the #WinePW hashtag on Twitter. The Bordeaux varieties are big in Turkey. While I do not know statistics on how much vineyard area is given over to any particular grape, I do know that they are some

  We left the A. Gere vineyards on day 3 of our Hungarian wines tour with Hungarianwines.eu and headed to their winery for a walk around tasting of Villány's 12 best Cabernet Franc wines. Villány and Cabernet Franc While Villány's historically most important grape is Portugieser, it is most renowned for Cabernet Franc. Here in what is called the 'devil's punch bowl' due to the intense heat the region receives, Cabernet Franc ripens both well and predictably every year. Plush, velvety tannins, ripe fruit flavors, and those lovely earthy and spicy notes that make Cab Franc stand out are on full display in Villányi Franc. PDO Villány wines have three quality levels: Classic: no

  We left Tornai after our tasting to continue our Hungarian wines tour with Hungarianwines.eu in a different region: Szekszárd. But first, another three hour drive! There was lots of driving on this trip. I was pretty happy to not have to be the one driving at least! I'm usually the one behind the wheel. Plus, all these long drives gave us time to get to know one another. [caption id="attachment_16420" align="alignright" width="449"] Map courtesy of Hungarianwines.eu[/caption] Szekszárd  Szekszárd (sek-sard), was not entirely a new-to-me region in that I'd heard of it and had previously drunk some Szekszárdi wines. But I'd never been before this tip! Located in southern Hungary, a stone's throw from

  After lunch at the Paris Passage, we headed east of Budapest to the Mátra region. With vineyards located on the lower slopes of the Mátra mountain range close to the border with Slovakia, this is Hungary's second largest PDO. Just west of Eger, the soils here consist largely of volcanic soils, sand, and loess which contribute to the region's signature aromatic whites and structured red wines. [caption id="attachment_16378" align="alignright" width="500"] Map courtesy of Hungarianwines.eu[/caption] White grape varieties here include Irsai Olivér, Rizlingszilváni, Olaszrizling, Zenit, Leányka, Hárslevelű, Sauvignon Blanc, Szürkebarát (Pinot Gris), Chardonnay, and Tramini. For reds, Kékfrankos dominates but Turán, Zweigelt, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Merlot. Getting to Know Mátra We arrived

  Some Turkish grape names are very straightforward. Kalecik Karası, for example, means “black from Kalecik.” Very little to argue about there. Others, like Gök, have unknown origins. A few, like Karalahna, have hotly contested translations. Papazkarası (pa-paz-ka-rah-sih) is the only grape with a spelling dispute! Wineries seem to be split down the middle on whether they spell it Papazkarası, with a ‘z’, or Papaskarası, with an ‘s’.  However it gets spelled, one thing everyone agrees on is that this Thracian variety makes darn good wine.  The name means  “black of the pope” or “pope’s black” which allegedly goes back to the Byzantine era when wines made from this grape were