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Çalkarası Tag

HomePosts tagged "Çalkarası"

  For my birthday in August, my friend Malia of Shoyu Sugar made SPAM musubis for me!! I remember eating SPAM a bit when I was a kid. My mom mixed ground SPAM with American cheese and white onions and we made hot sandwiches with it. I actually really kind of liked it. But it wasn't until I had Malia's musubis that I understood what kind of magic you can make with this meat.  I won't go into the history of SPAM or how deeply embedded it is in Hawaiian culture. Suffice to say, SPAM musubis are a common snack food in Hawaii. When she can get the ingredients, Malia

  Çalkarası is what I like to call Turkey's 'Cinderella' grape. For a long time, winery's have used this grape as a work horse to make up table wines and cheap red and rosé blends. And yet, the grape has great capacity to make high-quality wines. How do we know that? To begin, because we know that we share this grape with Greece where it does make high-quality wines. In Greece, Liatiko (as they call it) is the 5th most planted grape and the star of Crete's robust wine industry. How did it get from Crete to the inner Aegean in Turkey (or vice versa)? Dunno. Nor do I

  Summer has arrived hard and fast in Turkey with temperatures already soaring into the 30s even in Istanbul. Air conditioning units work round the clock and electricity outages have increased apace of everyone running those units. While I love white wine (and am increasingly coming around to rosé), especially during this time of the year, not everyone does. Even if you do like white and rosé wines, the summer heat is no reason to give up your red wines entirely. “But no!” I can hear you exclaiming, “How can I drink red wine in this heat?” Chill them! Yes, you heard me, stick ‘em in the fridge. Before

  Every year - well every year that I remember - I like to do a quick review of the wines I posted about during the year that I most enjoyed, that most surprised me, etc. So with no further ado, let's jump into my favorite Turkish wines of 2023! My Favorite Sparkling Wines There weren't many new sparkling wines released this year. And frankly, with the skyrocketing price of most Turkish bubbles, I didn't really drink much. And while the Paşaeli Karasakız Pét-Nat may not be a fair wine to include, as it was a super limited bottling, it nonetheless gets a spot.  My Favorite White Wines Over the last few years,

  Last year I fell in love with Kuzubağ wines. They came out of the gate with seven very successful and reasonably priced (a miracle here these days) wines. Kuzubağ has returned with its sophomore vintage now and it's already looking very promising.  They've added new wines to the stable this year, both white and reds. I still love all the white wines from their freshman vintage so I immediately snapped up two of the new ones: a Bornova Misketi and a Çal Karası blanc de noir. Kuzubağ, part of the Çal Bağ Yolu, is located in the Çal district of Denizli in Turkey's inner Aegean. The winery’s vineyards sit at

  It's been absolutely ages since I did a wine bar review! A few months ago, a friend brought 316 Meze & Wine to my attention and we finally got around to checking it out. So, here we are again with a new wine bar review! Tucked away in Nişantaşı, around the corner from the American Hospital (possibly a strange but utterly unmissable landmark), is the new-ish 316 Meze & Wine. They're making great use of the small space they have here with high tables and stools that aren't nearly as uncomfortable as they look. The shiny, modern tables and stools echo all the shiny metals in the sparkling clean

  This June, Camilla from Culinary Cam has invited the #WinePW crew to explore wine and cheese pairings. Any cheese, any wine, any region our hearts desire! You can read her invitation post here. If you're reading this in time, join us for our Twitter chat on Saturday, June 10 at 11 AM EST and tell us about your favorite wine and cheese pairings! I love cheese. And when I say I love cheese, I mean that I LOVE cheese. If the choice came down to chocolate or cheese, cheese all the way. I also have an entire auxiliary freezer for cheese (and pork because, you know, I live in

  Every year - well every year that I remember - I like to do a quick review of the wines I posted about during the year that I most enjoyed, that most surprised me, etc. So with no further ado, let's jump into my favorite Turkish wines of 2022! My Favorite Sparkling Wines Sparkling wines are always going to be at the tippy top of my list! Not many new sparkling wines were released this year but, even if it were the only one, the Arcadia Pét-Nat Sauvignon Gris would still sit at the top of the tippy top.  Yaşasın is not new but it still makes my list. This year, I

  Over the winter I met some of the family behind new Çal-based winery, Kuzubağ. Historically, the wineries located on the Denizli-Çal plateau have produced more bulk, lower-quality wines. Kuzubağ is one of the new wineries here that want to change that image. One of the ways they're doing it is to emphasize the local grape, Çalkarası.  The winery's vineyards sit at an elevation of 850 meters in clay-loam and calcareous soil. Given the elevation, there's a great difference between day and night temperatures allowing grapes to ripen over a longer period while retaining their freshness. Here they grow not only Çalkarası, but also Kalecik Karası, Öküzgözü, Narince, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.  The