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Reaching for the Stars with Selefkia Göküzüm

 

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Selefkia Wine, a small, family winery has been reaching for the stars since it opened in 2008.

Alaaddin Çerçi, along with his wife Sakine and daughter Ebru, made a huge life change in the late 1990s when he left behind his career as an engineer to start working with grapes. Orphaned as a child, Çerçi supported his education with revenue from his late father’s vineyards in the Yenisu village in Mersin. However, years later, grape sales dropped off and the vineyards fell into disuse. Feeling like he owed a debt to the grapes, in 1998 he began to reanimate the old vineyards with a view to making wine.  

Selefkia Wine’s home vineyards, while in the hot and Mediterranean province of Mersin, sit at extremely high elevations in the Taurus Mountains. At 1,420 meters (4,660 feet) are the new (seven-eight year old) organic certified vineyards in terra rossa soils. Slightly lower at 1,150 meters (3,773 feet), 80-year-old goblet vines grow on ungrafted roots in phylloxera-free white clay and calcareous soils heavily peppered with marine fossils. In both vineyards, Selefkia Wine works only with indigenous varieties found only in this region: Patkara, Aküzüm, Göküzüm, and İsbitiren.

For quite sometime, you had to be in the know to know about and find Selefkia’s wines. But in the last year or two, the winery has moved into the limelight. Wines are now relatively easy to source in Istanbul. And, thanks to their dedication to local indigenous grapes, we now have a whole new selection of grapes and flavors to learn about.

A heavenly grape?

Göküzüm (which I’ve also seen as Gök Üzüm) hails from Turkey’s Mediterranean region. Specifically, from the Taurus Mountains. Medium-sized, elongated, green berries grow in medium-sized, loose bunches. The grape generally results in medium-bodied, fruity wines with vegetal undertones and lively acidity.

In Turkish, gök means ‘sky’, ‘heavens’, ‘celestial’ etc. So how did this grape earn that exalted name? One story goes that this grape, used by locals more for table grapes and raisins than for wine production, would be hung high in the rafters of peoples’ houses to dry. Or perhaps it’s because the grapes naturally grow at such high elevations. Selefkia’s own grapes come vineyards at 1,150 meters (3,773 feet) above sea level. 

Selefkia Göküzüm, 2020

Selefkia’s Göküzüm vines, which average 80 years of age, grow in clay and limestone soils. The elevation helps mitigate the region’s otherwise hot climate and provides a longer growing system during which grapes can develop sugar while maintaining acidity. 

I quickly discovered that this is a decanting wine!! I’m bad at decanting red wines let alone remembering to do it for whites. But trust me on this and decant it and give it 15-20 minutes. This wine also shows to its best advantage when it’s not straight from the refrigerator cold so you’ll want that amount of time to let it warm up a tad anyway.

Warm lemon in the glass with aromas to match! Pomelo, bergamot, and pear framed by plumeria and ginger flower and streak of fresh acidity. A textured wine mimicking the aromatic richness with a broad palate and slight fatness. Dry, medium-bodied with 13.3% abv.