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White Wine

HomeWhite Wine (Page 45)

  Last fall while in Cappadocia with my brother we stumbled upon the Kocabağ winery. I don’t recall ever seeing this wine in Istanbul so I took advantage of being there and picked up several of the winery's Emir wines. Previously the only Emir varietal I’d seen was Turasan’s so I was excited to see how many Kocabağ had. One of the things I continue to like about Emir wines is that it does not match well with oak so in all likelihood your Emir has been steel-aged. This Kocabağ Emir (40-something TL I think) was pale and brilliant in the glass with a lot of pineapple in the nose.

  It’s no secret how I feel about Chardonnay-basically I hate it. I enjoy a steel-aged Chardonnay but those are difficult to find in the US, finding one in Turkey is like finding a unicorn standing in a field of four-leaf clovers. However a friend of mine is a huge fan of Sevilen’s Isa Bey Chardonnay and at her prompting I tried a bottle. Before we talk about the wine itself (35 TL from Carrefour, 69 from Solera) let’s talk about this particular line of Sevilen wines. Isa Bey means Mr. Jesus. Naming your wine after the guy famous for turning water into wine (if I but had a superpower!)

  “‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of other things’.” For me that means it’s time to switch from my beloved red wines to the whites I try to drink during the warmer months. Now that summer is upon us I will try to drink more whites, like the Arcadia Sauvignon Gris and may even face off with a few Chardonnays. To kick this off I went to a white wine tasting with some of my girlfriends. Organized by Istanbul-based British pub, Pubness, we were to taste our way through four different Turkish wines with French sommelier Jean Luc. Forty to sixty people were expected at this event but

  A friend of mine was in town not too long ago and I met her at her hotel for a drink. Normally I’d have suggested Solera or one of the other wine places I like so much but she was staying at Soho House and I couldn’t not go. I am not that cool Soho House is a private club/luxury hotel with locations around the world. A new location was recently opened in Istanbul in what was the American Consulate here. Now the American Consulate is far outside the city it might as well be in Bulgaria. It’s a gorgeous building and Soho House has done a lot of expensive

  You wouldn’t really know it based on the weather here in Istanbul but summer is over. I’d sad face if it weren’t for the fact that Autumn is my favorite season. Unfortunately that leaves me with a few bottles of white still in the fridge! While I’ll get around to those at some point, this makes the last wine of the Summer White Wines the 2014 Chamlija Albarino. I was in La Cave a little white ago hoping to find another bottle of the Chamlija Viognier (I really liked that one!). I did not find the Viognier but I did find a treasure trove of other Chamlija wines, both

  I’ve been shopping a lot recently at Senus which is home to the largest collection of Yanık Ülke wines I’ve seen. In fact for a while it was the only place I saw any wines by this maker (they’ve been popping up now at La Cave as well). Yanık Ülke, which hasn’t been winning any awards from me yet, has the dubious honor of producing a Muscat that is both the most expensive (50TL) Muscat I’ve had here…and the worst. If the Yanık Ülke Muscat were just the nose then it would have been a fair (although still not particularly good) wine. The aromas of apple, honey, and flowers were

  The Smyrna Sauvignon Blanc Trebbiano by LA Wines I picked up a Carrefour not too long ago. I’ve never tried any of Smyrna’s wines and since summer is still on and I needed more whites I figured why not. This was a good decision. I always hesitate a little over Sauvignon Blancs never knowing if I’m going to get something that’s on the herby and green pepper end of the scale (which I do not like) or the riper peachy and fruity end of the scale (which I do like). Because wine roulette is not my favorite game, despite how often I seem to play it here, I was

  I’m always leery of white wines but I got talked into this one against my better judgement. When I see “aged for 8 months in oak barrels” usually I run the other way. Sigh, there’s a reason we pay attention to our instincts. But with the way the TL is going these days (sorry about that, Turkey) a 97TL bottle isn’t as horribly expensive as it used to be. Out of the bottle the Suvla Reserve Roussanne Marsanne was a lot paler than I expected, a very soft yellow. The softness of the tint belied the strength of the nose which was very perfumey and full of citrus and oak. Right

  Aside form a late harvest white I have yet to open, the vast majority of wines I brought home from Hungary were reds. However a talkative young man at the Dorgicesi hut convinced me that I should try a wine made from a traditional Hungarian grape and got me to give their Juhfark a try.  For 1200 HUF (just over $4) what could it hurt? Absolutely nothing, that’s what it could hurt. Or couldn’t hurt more accurately. If scents are colors then the color of the Juhfark and the nose match perfectly. The wine is a beautiful golden color that seemed almost reflected in the hints of honey in the

  A while back E and I trekked out to the Kanyon mall to visit Macro Center-a place I have avoided for two and a half years because I heard it was addictive. Macro Center, you see, is the import grocery store. In the end I was actually pretty disappointed by it. My local Carrefour carries a lot of the same things; although I was thrilled beyond measure to find large tubs of red curry paste! No more having to get people to bring/send me the itty bitty pots of Thai Kitchen paste. I was of course hoping that the import store would have a decent selection of foreign