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Vinkara Tag

HomePosts tagged "Vinkara"

  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

  Quick, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about sparkling wine? I could take a few guesses. But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that none of those things are: Turkey, Central Anatolia, or Kalecik Karası. Unless you happen to be a fan of my blog. In which case, hi mom! Whether or not these are things that pop into your mind when you think about sparkling wine, all three things are related to it. And for this month's #WinePW Bubbles From Around the World conversation, they're what I'm talking about. If anyone thought of those three things, it was Ardıç

  Hasandede is one of those grapes that doesn't get a lot love. According to 'Wine Grapes', Hasandede makes "very basic-quality white wine." Maybe that was true when the book was copywritten in 2012. But it's far from true now. And while it may not be true (any longer) that the grape makes only basic-quality wines, what sadly is true is how little we know about the grape itself. Hasandede (has-an-de-day), literally the ‘grandfather Hasan’, likely originated in Kırıkkale near Turkey’s capital Ankara. The medium-sized berries have thin-skins. They start out bright green but reach a golden green-yellow color with brown freckles by full ripeness. Prior to Vinkara making the first

  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

  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

  It's Christmas Eve!!! Huzzah! Based in the Kalecik village outside Turkey's capitol Ankara, Vinkara owner Ardıç Gürsel laughingly described the winery as "the largest of the small or the smallest of the large". When the Gürsel family founded the winery in 2003, size was not her goal. Featuring Turkish grapes was her number one and that's what they do. Vinkara's efforts in making fine wine with native grapes extends to Gürsel's number goal: to be the first to make a traditional method sparkling wine with a native Turkish grape. And that's exactly what she did.  Vinkara's Yaşasın, made with the not only native but local Kalecik Karası comes in a blanc

  For today's post I'm taking a slight departure in that these bottles did not come from the pre-selected Advent wines. I was asked to give a small (online) wine tasting. Having then opened three wines for this, and being my cat is a teetotaler, I deemed it unwise to open yet one more wine just to get something from the Advent calendar. And I cannot say I'm feeling particularly sad about the situation. I had a peek into the box and all but one of the remaining wines have been covered for more blind tasting challenges. As it was, we had a great tasting with most of the participants having

  For this month's #WinePW, host Gwendolyn from Wine Predator has invited us all to Re/Consider Harvest: How will global warming change what we eat, drink, grow? You can view the original invitation here. Whether or not you wrote about it, if you're interested, join the conversation on Twitter on Saturday, September 12 at 8am Pacific/11am Eastern/10am Central/6pm Istanbul by following the #WinePW hashtag. While climate change is as much an issue in Turkey as anywhere else, my three jobs got a little out of control this last month and I wasn't able to badger harvest/climate change information out of any of my wineries. However, as an old hand at

  I continued my online wine tasting series last Friday with one of my favorite Turkish grapes, Öküzgözü.  Öküzgözü wasn't always a favorite of mine. In fact for a long time I avoided it; finding it too insipid for my preferences. This is Turkey's most widely planted native black variety. Which means the chances for encountering crap wines is pretty high; and I've drunk a lot of those. However, a couple years ago I came across a boutique producer, Eskibağlar. That one wine changed my whole view about Öküzgözü and I began actively seeking out examples from around the country.  This grape originates in the Eastern Anatolia province of Elazığ. Vineyards abound