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Wine Reviews

HomeWine Reviews (Page 38)

By 1Red Wine, Turkish Wine, Wine Reviews

  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:

By 0Red Wine, Turkish Wine, Wine Reviews

  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

By 0Turkish Wine, White Wine, Wine Reviews

  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

By 0Red Wine, Rest of the World, Wine Reviews

  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

By 0European Wines, Rest of the World, White Wine, Wine Reviews

  This morning I finally managed to pull out a not blind tasting bottle! And the first white wine of the season too! What I got was a Grüner Veltliner from F.X. Pichler - just about the only Grüner Veltliner available in Turkey. I adore Grüner Veltliner. Luckily I have an Austrian friend who brings back bottles to share with me. Even though she comes from Welschriesling country and gently mocks my pronunciation of Grüner Veltliner. It's a deceptively difficult thing to say. Or so I tell myself to avoid having to admit simply that my German accent is atrocious. My apologies to all German speaking people to whom I

By 0European Wines, Red Wine, Wine Reviews

  It seems, based on a quick inspection of my Advent boxes o' wine, that I wrapped MOST of them to disguise the labels. Which really makes my Advent wine calendar a month-long blind tasting experiment. That's good though. I desperately need the practice. And it also lends an exciting sensation of fear and trepidation every time I reach into the box. Today's wine is missing the capsule. I must have thought that would give me too many clues as to its contents. That says to me either the wine is foreign and I wanted to remove any tell-tale DOP indications; or it's domestic but I put only one wine

By 0Red Wine, Turkish Wine, Wine Reviews

  It's #CabFrancDay y'all! In 2015 Lori Budd of Dracaena Wines and Exploring the Wine Glass created #CabFrancDay to celebrate her favorite grape. While I've still not been able to get my hands on a bottle of Dracaena Wines Cab Franc (next time I'm State-side!) I'm still excited to be able to celebrate the day she created. And you can celebrate along with all of us Cab Franc lovers too! Follow along with the day's three hashtags: #CabFrancDay, #LoveCabFranc, and #CabFrancLove. Cabernet Franc Most probably know Cab Franc as a blending grape. In Bordeaux-style wines, Cab Franc often is blended with two of its offspring: Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. However, the grape has

By 0Red Wine, Turkish Wine, Wine Reviews

  This morning I pulled out from my Advent boxes o' wine another disguised bottle. Probably in punishment for how poorly I did at guessing yesterday's wine! But, part of super enforceable and binding agreement I made with myself included having to drink whichever wine I selected. No putting anything back to try my luck again. So let's see if my blind tasting skills improved at all since yesterday! Once again I had reasonable assurance that I'd pulled a Turkish wine based on the tax label on the capsule. I did include a number of wines from other countries in this calendar. However, the majority are Turkish so it's not

By 0Red Wine, Turkish Wine, Wine Reviews

  Mixed in my boxes of Advent wine I put a few disguised bottles. Because I don't have a wine geek community here I don't get to practice blind tasting a lot. My cat, Sherlock has yet to learn wine service and it's mighty tricky to choose, open, and pour a bottle completely blindfolded. Since I chose these wines months ago I thought I might stand a chance of forgetting what a few of them are and disguised a couple labels. This morning I pulled out the first of these! I managed to open the bottle without getting a peek at the cork. So, off to a good start! The medium