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Sweet Wine

HomeSweet Wine (Page 6)

  In August I went back to the States for the first time in two years. While I was there I gave a wine tasting for some family and friends. It was a strange mixed bag of wines from the US and abroad. It included two wines from Michigan; one from Leelanau Cellars. Yes. We make wine in Michigan. Every. Single. State. In America makes wine. Even Hawaii and Alaska. California may have the biggest reputation but personally I don’t think they’re even the best. For me the best American wines are coming out of Oregon, Washington, and New York.  But back to Michigan. Michigan wines are steadily, if somewhat slowly,

  Many people I know are turned off by the term: late harvest. “I don’t like dessert wine.” “It’s too sweet.” For many ‘late harvest’ means a wine that is syrupy sweet; but it doesn’t have to mean that at all. Late harvest wines can be super sweet, dry, and everything in between. Sweet Is as Sweet Does The late harvest Misket Urla Symposium is an excellent example. It is not a dessert wine but a lovely, light, semi-sweet. So if late harvest doesn’t automatically mean sweet wine; what does it mean? Late harvest grapes are just that. They are grapes that have been left on the vine longer than a typical harvest (an additional one

  Naturally it took me four years here to find the wine tasting scene and now that I’m in it I’m sorry I’ll have to abandon it so soon. Most of the tastings I attend are run by Murat, founder of Şarap Atölyesi. I love going to Murat’s tastings. Not only do I get to try new wines, often pulled from his private collection but it’s a double learning experience for me. I’m usually one of only few (if not the only!) non-native Turkish speaker so his lecture and materials are naturally all in Turkish. I generally take away 75-80% of what’s going on so it’s bot challenging and rewarding. Murat put together

  I bought this Szabó Pince Turán about a year and a half ago when I spent a miserable week in Balat, Hungary. The only thing that made that trip bearable was the Hungarian Festival with all its food and wine booths. While I do like a sweet wine, I don’t normally lean towards sweet reds. Even though I quite liked this Szabó Pince Turán when I tried it at the festival (although to be fair I was likely rather in my cups at the time) I’ve hesitated to open it since bringing it home. However when my girlfriend over at Multiculturally Wed sent me a recipe for red wine brownies I knew I’d found

  Recently I discovered that a new friend owns a yacht. And while I would love to be friends with the idle rich O is not idle, she and her husband have a travel agency here in Istanbul and the yacht is one of the services they offer. She kindly offered to take a bunch of us out a couple weeks ago for a Sunday Bosphorus cruise, and what goes better with a cruise than a nice, sweet wine like the Turasan Misket? So on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon we all met at the Kabatas dock to board the Zoe in what was going to be a three hour tour

  I have now had and written about the Pamukkale Senfoni Sek and Domi Sek. I’ve always quite liked the domi sek but I never tried the full-on Senfoni Sultaniye sweet. Until now. Sweet wines pair beautifully with spicy food which is one of the reasons I find myself eating a lot of çiğ köfte; they go well with the oh-so quaffable Miskets I like to drink in the summer. Assuming that a sweet Sultaniye grape would pair just as nicely I decided to try the Senfoni Sultaniye Sweet when I made blacked salmon a few weeks ago. It was a good choice. The color of pale hay with green lights, this

  The Leona Bloom is yet another winner in the Misket family! I’ve only tried one wine from Leona in the past, a Kalecik Karasi/Merlot blend I didn’t much care for; however the Leona Bloom was quite lovely. Just sweet enough to not be dry, quite easy to drink and very aromatic with beautifully pronounced florals. As with the previous Miskets, the Leona Bloom had a lovely pale, clear yellow color and floral nose but what made it stand out from the previous Misket wines I’ve tried was how strong the orange blossom aromas were. Since the orange blossom aspect of the Misket is my favorite part of the wine

  I am making it my mission this summer to try all the Misket wines produced in Turkey! And so far all of them are winners. Doluca’s Safir semi-sweet Misket is no exception. Before I wax poetical about its orange blossom and honeysuckle flavors, a little technical information about the Misket grape is needed, I think. Misket (or Muscat for us Westerners) grapes come from Izmir along the Aegean. The wines they produce run the gambit between “dry” to dessert. I say “dry” though as my personal experience, with any Muscat, not just Turkish, is that a so-called “dry” Muscat leans a little closer to semi-dry than straight up dry. Doluca

  In an effort to start drinking more white wines to match the warming weather I picked up a bottle of the 2012 Ancyra Muscat at Carrefour and fell in love! Muscat grapes are of course more widely known for being made into dessert wines but you can find the occasional “dry” Muscat. Although semi-sweet is really far more accurate a descriptor. With a pale straw color with a delicate, floral nose, a muscat’s flavor profile includes: orange blossoms, honey, honeysuckle, basil, roses, mint, bergamont, lemon balm, daisies, grapefruit, and melon. Daises, that’s a new one. To me this is a really interesting flavor profile and I would have liked to been