Should I decide to do a homemade Advent wine calendar next year I'm going to rethink a couple few things. One
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This morning my box o' Advent wines offered up my first white wine blind tasting bottle. One of my preparations involved removing capsules from quite a few bottles. In some cases I did so to further disguise the wine within. For the blind tasting white wines I did it so I could mark the corks to indicate a white wine in need of refrigeration. We're having a warm snap in Istanbul. Which basically means we're back up to our usual early December temperatures of low mid teens (Celsius). So a white a white wine was very welcome today! My guess: moderate to cool climate, lightly oaked Sauvignon Blanc with
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It's #CabFrancDay y'all! In 2015 Lori Budd of Dracaena Wines and Exploring the Wine Glass created #CabFrancDay to celebrate her favorite grape. While I've still not been able to get my hands on a bottle of Dracaena Wines Cab Franc (next time I'm State-side!) I'm still excited to be able to celebrate the day she created. And you can celebrate along with all of us Cab Franc lovers too! Follow along with the day's three hashtags: #CabFrancDay, #LoveCabFranc, and #CabFrancLove. Cabernet Franc Most probably know Cab Franc as a blending grape. In Bordeaux-style wines, Cab Franc often is blended with two of its offspring: Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. However, the grape has
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This morning I pulled out from my Advent boxes o' wine another disguised bottle. Probably in punishment for how poorly I did at guessing yesterday's wine! But, part of super enforceable and binding agreement I made with myself included having to drink whichever wine I selected. No putting anything back to try my luck again. So let's see if my blind tasting skills improved at all since yesterday! Once again I had reasonable assurance that I'd pulled a Turkish wine based on the tax label on the capsule. I did include a number of wines from other countries in this calendar. However, the majority are Turkish so it's not
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My homemade Advent wine calendar consists of two case-sized boxes. About two months ago I pull 26 wines from my collection and put them in these boxes. Every day I plan to pull out one wine in the morning (in case it's white and requires chilling!) and at some point during the day drink, write, and post about it! I visited Datça Bağcılık ve Şarapçılık
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I frequently lament the vast amount of Bordeaux-style blends we have in Turkey. Partially because it does get rather tedious to drink the same blends over and over. Mostly though because Turkey has a plethora (1240+ at last count) of its own grapes! Of which we see maybe 40 in wine. But since I do so often complain about the sea of wanna be Bordeaux here, I thought maybe I should talk about a few of them for once. But first
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While 2010 is not really that old as far as aged wines go, it’s old for the Turkish market. Finding wine commercially (frankly sometimes even at the winery) that’s more than a handful of vintages old is unusual. A lot of wine enthusiasts in Turkey have started to wonder if Turkish wine ages well or not. I cannot speak for all the wines, but this one sure did. Pamukkale Meridies Boğazkere Cabernet Franc 2010 For the Meridies Boğazkere Cabernet Franc, Pamukkale blended Boğazkere from Diyarbakır with Cab Franc from the Güney Plateau in Denizli. The Boğazkere underwent carbonic maceration to help bring out more of the grape’s fruit characteristics and
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Misket, the Turkish name for Muscat, not only makes some of best sweet wines in Turkey but is increasingly known for quality dry wines. Most likely a child of Muscat Blanc á Petit Grains, Bornova Misketi has its own genetic characteristics and is a Turkish grape. Although it's more common for the black grapes, like many Turkish grapes it takes its name from its place of origin. Bornova Misketi, which means "muscat of Bornova" originated around the village of Bornova just outside Izmir, Turkey's third largest city. It now grows primarily in Manisa in Turkey's Aegean region (of which Izmir is part). Bornova Misketi prefers warm climates and clay and gravel
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This week I'm continuing my #Merlober celebrations with wine pairings for two Merlots from the same Turkish winery: Claros. Claros winery comes to us from the Yavaş family. Brainchild of the father with son, Canberk, serving as winemaker. Claros keeps things simple for us. They make Merlot. Only Merlot. Possibly they should act as the Turkish representative for #MerlotMe month! The winery takes its name from tClaros he nearby ruins of ancient Greek city, Klaros. Not only does it specialize in Merlot, but Claros also makes completely unfined, unfiltered, wild ferment Merlot. When other wineries here say they make unfined/unfiltered or "limited" filtered wines, I laugh. Maybe their wines have
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Öküzgözü Şarapçılık outside Izmir is one of those curious cases we see occasionally here. It is both a bulk and a boutique winery. The bulk wine generally gets shipped straight off to meyhanes and wedding halls. Rarely, if ever, can you find it commercially. Rarely, if ever, would you want to . A few years ago winery owner Rıfat Şekerdil turned his attention towards a more quality-driven approach to winemaking. With the bulk side of the winery generating enough profit to cover all the winery's operations, Şekerdil set aside his better vineyards to to grow better fruit. In the winery, he employed gentler methods and invested in oak barrels
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