Yaban Kolektif Karasakız Knocking It Out of the Park!
In the September 2023 Turkish Wine Horoscope post, I promised a review of this wine and here it finally is!
Yaban Kolektif is a group of wine professionals and enthusiasts dedicated to reviving some of Turkey’s rarer grapes. Not having a winery of their own, they cooperate with other wineries (mostly Vinolus lately) and winemakers to release their wines.
From Yaban’s Instagram:
Yaban is a step taken to reunite viticulture and winemaking in Turkey with its past and forgotten values. We lost our rich viticulture culture, winemaking techniques, traditions, festivities and rituals in a short time after the natural disasters and forced population exchanges in the last century. It will perhaps never be possible to fully recover this memory. Anatolia is losing its grape heritage day by day and the danger is not past even for the varieties we think have been saved. Yaban aims to contribute to current efforts towards this goal with a practical model. While joining the ranks of Turkey’s wine producers, Yaban determines the ideals she will pursue as follows:
Our priority is to bring the forgotten grapes into a commercial activity that will save them from extinction, and to attract the attention of other producers by revealing the true potential of these grapes. Therefore, Yaban varieties will change, those that have not changed will be processed in various styles.
In addition to local varieties, we will be working with international grapes such as Semillon, Carignan, Cinsault, Gamay, and Alicante, which were planted in our country in the last century but are not often fermented by today’s producers.
While we source our grapes from vineyards that do not belong to us, we will guide the way these vineyards are cultivated day by day according to organic and even better biodynamic principals. At least, we will strive for better viticulture compared to the previous year.
We will aim to ensure that the use of oak in winemaking does not mask the characteristic features of the varieties, and that they are made in a style that reflects the vineyard regions and and is far from the international style.
While making use of today’s technological possibilities and modern winemaking techniques, we will give priority to fermentation with local yeasts. We will try to prove that another life is possible in the increasingly commercialized world of wine, which we love and are proud to be a part of.
The decision to make Karasakız is … interesting. While it doesn’t get as much attention as I personally think it should, it’s hardly falling off the map. In fact, it seems to be having quite an uptick in popularity these days. Suvla has long made many different wines with Karasakız, Paşaeli makes a few high-end wines with it, and several wineries on Bozcaada have been using it for years (although bottling it under the island name for the grape, Kuntra). Asmadan, 7Bilgeler, and Heraki have also recently released new Karasakız wines.
Yaban Kolektif Karasakız, 2021
So while this hardly meets Yaban’s ‘forgotten grape’ manifesto, they sure hit it out of the park with this one! Or at least the winemaker José Hernandes Gonzalez (founder of Heraki, winemaker at Vinolus) did.
The grapes for this wine came from 35 year old vines from Çavuşlu Köyü in the Bayramiç district of Çanakkale. They fermented in 500 liter amphora and aged therein seven months before bottling. (Mainland) Karasakız never produces a particularly opaque or darkly colored wine, but this was possibly the palest I have seen. Brilliant, clear ruby that you can see right through.
The color pay have been pale but that was the only thing about this wine that was! Just wow. A snout full of freshly cracked black pepper hit right at the top of the glass followed by red fruits and earth. More fruit evident on the palate with pomegranate and red currants wrapped like silk around a strong acidic backbone, decorated with pepper, savory herbs, and earthy goodness.
I’ve had this wine a couple few times now and it’s very food friendly. I know for sure it’s available at La Cave and Mensis Mahzen (better price at the latter, at least before the new year tax hike). It is on the pricier side but, if you’re going to splurge on something, this will not disappoint.