Kayra Vintage Boğazkere 2017
In January, Esat bey, owner of La Cave in Cihangir, asked if I’d recently had the Kayra Vintage Boğazkere. It was his highest selling wine that month. Far (apparently) outstripping any other wine sales. He gave me a bottle with the instructions to go home that evening, open it, and let him know what I thought. He would do the same.
I do not know who started the run on this wine but I hope that person creates more buying trends! It’s been a while since I’ve had any Kayra and I forget sometimes how good their wine is. Particularly those in the Vintage and Versus lines. If you’re looking for a good example of single varietal Boğazkere, Kayra’s got you covered with this one.
Kayra Vintage Boğazkere, 2017
Boğazkere’s home is Diyarbakır in Turkey’s far east. One of Kayra’s wineries sits not too far away from Diyarbakır in Elazığ (home of the Öküzgözü grape). Kayra uses the Elazığ winery as its home base for all the wines it produces with these two grapes.
Deep purple ruby in the glass, the wine exuded a dark richness. I know this aged in oak but I don’t know for how long. However long it did though was a perfect marriage of fruit and wood. Aromas of tobacco, plum, brown sugar, black pepper, brown spices, and black currant hit me in waves one after the other. Flavors reflected the nose with the addition of purple flowers (iris) and a hint of bitter cocoa on the finish.
We say that Boğazkere delivers high-tannin wines. But really…I’ve never found this true. Possibly it delivers some of the highest tannins wines from Turkish grapes but compared to some international grapes like Cabernet, Nebbiolo, Monastrell, Tannat not so much. All that to say be it the excellent use of oak to soften them or the grape’s somewhat underserved reputation, the tannins on the palate here were persistent and velvety and gave structure to the wine but were not big or overwhelming. They added to the overall medium plus body along with 13% abv and medium plus acidity.
Really nice.