I am not a sommelier. I have never trained as one, or worked as one. But recently, I flew to Ankara to sommelier (can I use that as a verb?) at a special event hosted by the Singaporean Ambassador at his residence there. Am I that big of a deal in Turkey? As much as I'd like to say yes
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This is a semi sponsored post but all opinions are my own. While Paşaeli has built a reputation for its wines made from rescued and little-known Turkish grapes, the winery does produce a handful of wines using international grapes. In the past, these wines have all utilized black grapes. For example the Kaynaklar and K2 Bordeaux blends. Not anymore! Released last year, the Paşaeli Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş (once upon a time) marks the winery's first single-varietal white wine made with an international grape. Specifically, Chardonnay. Paşaeli Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş, 2019 Harvested from vineyards in Çal, the Chardonnay came from the vast expanse of Turkey's Aegean region. The wine is 100%
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It was recently pointed out to me that I never posted a list of my favorite wines from 2020. In fact, I have not posted a list like that since 2017! How embarrassing. However, I feel happy that someone reads this often enough to have noticed the oversight! We can all agree that very few of us enjoyed 2020. At least I had wine to cushion the blow! Below is a list of my favorite Turkish wines that I tried this year (in no particular order). Unfortunately my typing is a lot slower than my drinking so I haven’t posted reviews of all of them but for those I
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I am thrilled that I was able to put together a piece about some of the amazing women in Turkish Wine for The Vintner Project around Women's History Month. This is a story I have been wanting to tell for a while now and I am so grateful that The Vintner Project gave me a platform to do it. The Rising Stars in Turkish Wine Are Women In what is globally a male-dominated industry, Turkey emerges as an exceptional place to have a strong cade of women in the wine industry. Over a quarter of Turkey’s wineries employ women in a country where only about two in five working age
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I am so excited to share a guest piece that Moshé Cohen of In The Vineyard With kindly invited me to write! Reviving the Lost Grapes of Turkey Turkey. The mention of this country evokes thoughts of sultans and harems, sticky sweet Turkish delights, thick coffee, and hot air balloon rides over the fantastical ‘fairy chimney’ cave homes of Cappadocia. Wine is not the first thing to come to mind. Nor is it usually the fourth or the tenth. And yet, Turkey is, and for thousands of years has been, a wine producing country. Six grapes make up the backbone of wine production (with native vs international grapes): Boğazkere, Bornova Misketi,
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We spent Valentine's Day in Istanbul under both our regular weekend lockdown and a blanket of snow this year. Since we couldn't go out for Valentine's, I invited a couple people from my pandemic bubble over on Monday for a Galentine's Day wine tasting. The wines: four wines based in the Çalkarası grape from Paşaeli Wines. I've had all four wines individually but have really been wanting to open them together. Since even I have my limits I knew I needed help to open them all at once! I recently wrote conducted an interview with Paşaeli Wines owner Seyit Karagözoğlu for the Vintner Project. There are a lot of
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Friday heralded the Year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar. The day before happened to be a good friend's birthday. She usually holds a huge Chinese New Year pop up restaurant feast. However, COVID etc, that got canceled this year. Instead she hosted our small bubble for a Singaporean-Chinese new year-birthday feast. I decided to use the opportunity to see how I could pair Turkish wine with Chinese food. I brought a number of wines to the feast to cover as wide a spectrum as I could: whites, semi-sweet, rosé, amber, red
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I am so excited to have my second piece up on The Vintner Project! I'd like to say that I 'sat down with' Seyit Karagözoğlu of Paşaeli Wines to talk about his wines and his efforts to reinvigorate some of Turkey's disappearing grapes. However, times being what they are we conducted the interview over a series of emails and phone calls. Karagözoğlu is one of a small, but dedicated, group in Turkey trying to rescue Turkish wine grapes on the brink of extinction and he talked to me about what called him to do this. Seyit Karagözoğlu and Paşaeli Wines: Rescuing the Lost Turkish Grapes Turkey ranks sixth in grape production,
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Syrah is the most popular international grape planted in Turkey. Not only is it the most popular international grape, it's one of the top three planted grapes overall here. Therefore, finding a Syrah-based wine (varietal or otherwise) does not present a huge challenge here. Turkish winemakers produce outstanding Syrahs in both Old and New World styles (although the latter feels more prevalent). I've had some really beautiful Syrah wines from Turkey over the last few years. I've also had some really bad ones. But we're not going to talk about those! Prodom Reserve Syrah, 2014 Based in Aydın towards the east of the Aegean growing region, Prodom uses Syrah in many
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We all know Sultaniye; whether or not we actually know we do! In America we're more likely to refer to it as "Sultana" and it means raisins to us, not wine. Because few associate Turkey with wine, making the leap to think of it as a grape producer is almost as difficult. But it is, and a major one at that. In fact for Turkey we should talk first about grape production, then wine. The country is the world's sixth largest producer of grapes. However, a mere 3% gets used for wine and rakı. Most grapes are consumed fresh, made into pekmez (grape molasses), or raisins. For the
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