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Doluca Tanit Blends

 

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I begin this post with a little bit of a rant. One of my recent wine pet peeves concerns the hype around small production wineries. I’m all for small production and understand the allure of it over large format wineries. If the wine is good. However, sometimes these wineries have more cachet than quality. Wineries shouldn’t be lauded simply because they make under a certain number of bottles annually. If the wine isn’t good, it doesn’t matter if it comes from a small “boutique” winery or a large factory winery. But if the wine is good, should it matter who produces it?

Turkey has its fair share of factory wineries (good and bad) and small production wineries (also good and bad). I get annoyed though when someone dismisses a wine simply because the winery happens to produce a couple million bottles. Probably some of those millions include wines you wouldn’t want to drink. In fact, I know they do. Should the quality wines be dismissed because of that? Doluca is one of those larger format wineries people like to hate on here. Yes, a they make their fair share of plonk! And while I think their middle and upper range wines run a tad over priced, they are good. Really good in many cases.

Last year, Doluca released a new wine series: Doluca Tanit. The series, if a two wine collection can be called such, includes a red and a white blends of international grapes. Both of these blends are excellent wines that have gone on my ‘drink again’ list. That they’re made by a large format winery in no way detracts from their quality or drinkability.

Doluca Tanit Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc, 2017

The red Tanit blends together Cabernet Sauvignon (80%) with Cabernet Franc sourced from Doluca’s Thracian vineyards and aged for seven months in 225 liter French oak. The resulting wine glowed a medium intense ruby in the glass but you’ll have to take my word because I forgot to take a picture!

It had a bouquet that I could have contentedly sniffed for days. Prune and black mulberry fruit aromas wrapped up in a sensuous robe of chocolate, clove, cigar box, and tobacco with a hint of green bell pepper.  Elegant and rich on the palate with voluptuous and persistent tannins that carried flavors of bursting, ripe black cherries and fresh Mission figs. Other flavors like cigar box, spicy pepper and clove, chocolate echoed the nose with the addition of caramel espresso on the medium long finish.

Overall medium plus bodied with 14.5% abv and medium acidity. I am definitely going to buy this again and will probably give myself lots more time to just inhale that intoxicating bouquet!

Doluca Tanit Chardonnay Fiano, 2018

The white Tanit is a vintage newer but Doluca released both wines for the first time only last year. I’ve been very curious about this one because the Cabernets and Chardonnay we see a lot of here. Fiano, not so much. In fact, other than this wine I think not at all. This blend has a little more Chardonnay (55%) than Fiano (45%). Spoiler alert, it was utterly delightful. And to my great surprise was raised in oak! It was so lively and fresh I would never have guessed. Like the red wine, this also spent seven months in oak, 75% French and 25% American.

Medium pale lemon in the glass…for which you’ll also have to take my word as I just barely remembered to take a picture of the glass with some actual wine in it! Semi-aromatic and rich on the nose. Softly citrus with lemon blossom and bergamot perfume draped around a ripe and juicy white nectarine.

Surprisingly light in body for a 14% abv wine! Again I say, lively and bright with splashes of freshly squeezed lemon and grapefruit, slightly underripe nectarine, and a lingering flavor of orange oil on the medium finish.