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Pairing Fine Turkish Wine and Börek

 

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How do you pair fine Turkish wine with one of the country’s iconic staples, börek? That’s a question I found myself asking recently. 

For ages, my friend, Başak, has been telling me that she wants me to try this ‘amazing’ börekci in her mother’s neighborhood.  Not that I dislike börek, far from it, but my börek experiences in Istanbul have always left me a little cold. She finally wore me down, but I thought, let’s turn this into a wine pairing exercise. We were for sure going to be drinking wine anyway so, wine not?

Börek

Börek is a traditional food found throughout Turkey, the Balkans, arguably Greece with its various pitas, and into the Middle East. In which exact geographic location it was invented is debatable. My first introduction to it was while working in Serbia. The best börek I have ever had was in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. To this day, nothing has ever topped that.

In Turkey, the three most common kinds of börek appear to be kol börek, Sarıyer böreği, and su börek. They share basic similar properties but are vastly different in texture and flavor:

• Kol böreği is puff pastry prepared in long rolls, filled with cheese, potatoes, spinach, or meat. It gets its name, meaning “arm börek” from its appearance.  
• Sarıyer böreği, takes its name from its supposed place of invention, an Istanbul neighborhood on the Bosphorus. It resembles the kol böreği in terms of both appearance and fillings. However, dried currants and pine nuts may also be added giving it a richer flavor. 
• Su böreği, or “water börek” is, in my opinion, the most difficult one to make right. It can be utterly greasy and flavorless. But when done well, this heart attack on a plate is crazy good. To make it, sheets of dough are boiled briefly, then a mixture of beyaz peynir or künefe peyniri along with parsley and oil is scattered between the layers. The whole thing is brushed with butter and baked in a brick oven. 

There’s also a plain version of the börek is called küt böreği. And I ask this without ever having had it, but why…?

Pairing Wine and Börek

For Başak, the meat-filled börek is the best, but I love cheese everything. We agreed that we would get both. Now, which wines would have a chance to pair well with one or even both? Like all wine pairings, I thought about both the flavors I could expect from the börek. I also needed to consider the ‘weight’ of the food. Börek is heavy, flakey, and greasy. 

Bubbles seemed a no-brainer and rosé bubbles especially with its combination of flavors and high acidity. 

Knowing the cheese version of the börek would be filled with beyaz peynir (somewhat akin to Feta) I tried to think of a white wine that would pair well here. A number of native grapes pair well with beyaz peynir…but throw in the pastry and the oil and I was stumped. In the end, I decided to try an amber wine since they generally prove quite flexible.

Thinking of a red was a bit easier, there are plenty of higher acidity red wines that have flavors complimentary to the dried currants in the börek. And also, Başak had a bottle of the Heraki Akuarela Karasakız and I won’t ever turn that down. 

Vinkara Yaşasın Brut Rosé, 2020

Vinkara Yaşasın is probably my favorite traditional method sparkling wine in Turkey. I used to drink it on any random Tuesday, but then the price went from about 27 Euros a bottle to 70 and now I don’t buy it anymore. Granted, the slipping Lira has moved the price back to something closer to 53 Euros a bottle, but that just means it now gets reserved for special occasions. 

Vinkara’s rosé Yaşasıns are all 100% Kalecik Karası, traditional method, and brut (the 2020 had 10 g/L residual sugar). They average 24 months on the lees. The Yaşasın rosés start life as pale rosé and get a small addition of still rosé wine with the dosage. I don’t recall having drunk the 2020 before this occasion and was certainly not disappointed.

I love the nose on this: brown sugar-sprinkled red berries, red currants, delicately yeasty and floral…a full, soft mousse on the palate that echoes the nose.

In the end, this paired better with the meat börek than it did the cheese…but the real pairing winner was the tomato salad with sumac, red onions, and pine nuts!