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Red Wine

HomeRed Wine (Page 45)

  While Sherlock seemed utterly unmoved by this wine; I was not. I’m not usually a huge fan of Cabernet Franc but when Mustafa Çamlica, the owner of the Chamlija winery, suggested I try the 2014 Chamlija Cabernet Franc I wasn’t going to argue. I am so glad I took his advice. This slightly opaque, bright, garnet red Chamlija Cabernet Franc (found at La Cave for 95 TL) has a nose redolent of dried strawberries, mint, green peppercorn, jalepeno, and green bell pepper. The palate is smooth tannins, mouth-watering acid, and a long finish with lots of spicy and pepper flavors backed up with raspberry and blackberry fruits. My notes have ‘so nice’

  A couple weeks ago I drank two of Chateau Kalpak wines with some friends and it turns out that my friend AJ knows the owner of the vineyard! Immediately Operation Wine began and we coordinated our schedules to find a weekend we might all be available to go visit Chateau Kalpak. Unfortunately, no one told Bulent Bey, the owner, our plans! When AJ contacted him and we discovered that he would not in fact be at the chateau during our planned visit we had half a day of scrambling and constant back and forth WhatsApp messaging while we figured out if we were all available to make the several hour

  I have two favorite Turkish wines-and one is the 2011 Chateau Kalpak Twin. Chateau Kalpak is a semi newish winery, located in Şarköy on the Marmara Sea. I say semi newish in that I’ve only noticed the wines here in Istanbul for about the last 18 months or so but I believe their vines have been cultivated since the early 2000’s. Getting a bottle of Chateau Kalpak Twin is not for the faint of heart though. Suvla has the best price at 100 TL, Savoy Tobacco and La Cave are both around 115 TL, and at Solera it will set you back 140 TL (-25% if you buy it to go). Is

  I’ve been eyeing this 2014 Urla Tempus wine for a while but it’s 195 TL at Solera and I have a hard time coughing up that much for anything. However I have found it both at the Savoy tobacco shop in Cihangir and at Macro Center for 125 TL – far more reasonable in my opinion! The Urla Tempus is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Franc and has a fairly whopping 15% APV. It’s a double gold winner in the US and fully deserves to be. In the glass the dark ruby red wine smelled velvety and deep. The nose was all black

  I have only recently started exploring Kayra wines so they’re not wines that jump out at me when I’m shopping but when I saw this Kayra Versus Syrah Viognier blend I had to have it. A red-white grape blend? What?! I did some Googling and discovered that this particular blend is not all that unusual. It’s not all that usual either so I suppose it’s more accurate to say that this blend is not unheard of. The tradition of blending Viognier into Syrah has its roots (haha, see what I did there?) in France where the grapes are grown side-by-side in the  Côte-Rôtie region of the Northern Rhône Valley.

  Happily day two in Edirne was only about 35-36 C and not 38 because we had to bundle up several times to visit some more mosques. I was really looking forward to visiting the Arda winery but before we could get there we had to fill E’s need to see and do everything possible so we started the day at the Eski Camii (Old Mosque) located just down the street from the Selimiye Mosque. This is possibly the most uniquely decorated mosque I’ve ever visited. Rather than tiles or frescoes, the Old Mosque, completed in 1414, is almost stark of decoration except for the giant Arabic calligraphy inscriptions that

  A few weeks ago E&M, R, and I headed out of Istanbul. None of us had ever been to Edirne, the old second capitol of the Empire, and on a roll after Bozcaada, I wanted to visit a few area wineries, particularly Chamlija. So we rented a car and headed out to adventure. Adventure that was made both hilarious and painful long before we ever got to our destination thanks to Google Maps’ incredibly bad Turkish pronunciation. I realize it’s just a computer but come on. I mean think goodness I wasn’t the navigator because I truly had no idea what she was saying. Once we got into Edirne it

  I almost don’t even know where to begin with this. E and I set off on what was to be a relaxing weekend break at a winery spa in Bulgaria-it turned out to be something rather different. We left early so we could pick up our rental car at the airport and get the four-hour drive out of the way; unfortunately the travel troubles began right away. Enterprise’s system was down (“system problem” are words we often hear in Turkey) so despite arriving at their service counter before 9AM it wasn’t until 11 that we were finally on the road. With no traffic barring our way the drive through

  On our second day on Bozcaada we shared a fantastic Turkish breakfast with our hosts that included products from the island and their own gardens as well my new obsession: tomato jam. But tomato jam Turkish style which means they were whole, kind of candied tomatoes in sugar syrup. Apparently they’re soaked in lye to give them their crunchy texture? After breakfast we headed for our first wine adventure of the day-to the Amadeus Winery. Amadeus is owned by an Austrian man who grew up in Turkey who turned a family hobby into a business. I was very luckily to be able to talk to the owner for a while

  My adventure at Suvla was only a small part of my recent trip. I was invited with my friend T to visit some friends of hers (happily now also of mine) at their beautiful home, Lavender Breeze Farm on the island of Bozcaada where we visited the Corvus and Talay winemakers. We were invited to stay in The Priest’s House, a beautiful house they’ve rebuilt on their property which they rent out on AirBnB (check out the link!). Look at these rooms! T and I were prepared to stay forever. I found it a unique house in that the living room/kitchen and both bedrooms were independent from each other. Both bedrooms