LA Wines Meandros
Lucien Arkas began his path to winery ownership as a wine lover with a dream. And a lot of money. In 2010 when the floundering İdol Wines company went for sale, he snapped it up and began to turn it into a successful business. LA Wines (or LA Şarapçılık or Lucien Arkas Bağları or LA Mahzen you’ll see it all ways) sits within the boundaries of the city of Izmir in Torbalı. Despite being surrounded by industrial complexes, Arkas managed to get organic certification for his 29 hectares from Ecocert. He also built a beautiful restaurant and event space overlooking the vineyards which helped solidify the new winery’s success.
No my tree’s not up yet! This was last year’s.
The winery team wanted to challenge the local palate and preconceptions about wine and divides its production between the familiar and the unknown. LA Wines is responsible for bringing many new grape varieties to Turkey. It remains the only winery cultivating grapes like Chenin Blanc and Trebbiano and one of only two to have Marselan.
The winery makes a 100% Marselan which I drank years ago and really rather liked. That, and a recommendation from usually trustworthy Mensis Mahzen got me to pull the trigger on the winery’s madly-priced Marselan blend, Meandros.
LA Wines Meandros, 2016
Meandros blends together an interesting group of grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Shriaz, Marselan, and Merlot. The wine spent about 16 months maturing in French oak before bottling.
This was very tight and really needed time to open in order to coax aromas out of the wine’s inky darkness. Once it did, tobacco flowers and iris made themselves known twining with blackberry and black cherry scented with forest spice. The more it lived in the glass, the spicier it became. After that nose the palate let me down as very little of the promise from the aromas made their way to flavors. Sour cherry dominated muted spice and a ghost of purple flowers. Medium acidity, high alcohol (15%), and just a quick rasp of tannin before it was gone.
Overall not as good as I wanted it to be.