Turkish Wine of the Week - Sevillen 2012 W

A while back E and I trekked out to the Kanyon mall to visit Macro Center-a place I have avoided for two and a half years because I heard it was addictive. Macro Center, you see, is the import grocery store. In the end I was actually pretty disappointed by it. My local Carrefour carries a lot of the same things; although I was thrilled beyond measure to find large tubs of red curry paste! No more having to get people to bring/send me the itty bitty pots of Thai Kitchen paste. I was of course hoping that the import store would have a decent selection of foreign wines (and I heard that you could get them cheaper there than at La Cave)...

I bought local wines. Who goes to the fancy import store and comes home with local products? Apparently I do. The imported wine selection was slim and, like at many of the alcohol stores in Istanbul, it was a selection of the bottom of the barrel wines at top shelf prices. No thank you. So I purchased a couple Turkish wines I'd never seen before, one of which was Sevillen's 2012 W.

Frankly I was drawn to this because of the label. I'm not too proud to admit that I often choose wine based on how attractive I find the label so, kudos to the ad people. This particular label reminded me of "Wicked" which has long been both one of my favorite books and musicals.

The W is a blend of Semillion and Sauvignon Blanc, a blend we tried (in reverse) recently with Suvla. The W is a very pale straw yellow with a delicate floral, citrus, apple nose. On the palate it's clean, dry, and with a long finish with a lot of citrus and apple. Really lovely. We really liked this one. 

The W went beautifully with our dinner that night of grilled vegetables, Turkish carrot salad (recipe below!), and...the Heaven...pork sausage. Which we bought at the Macro Center. I love you, Devil's Meat.

I would definitely by Sevillen's W again. We all really enjoyed it and even as much as I love wine even I have to say that it can be difficult to find a wine that you like both with and without food and that is an easy drinking experience. I may even dare to blaspheme and say that I liked this better than the Suvla iteration...

Turkish Carrot Salad:

• 4-5 large carrots, peeled and grated
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3-4 big cloves of garlic, crushed
• 500 grams thick yogurt (suzme if you're in Turkey, otherwise Greek yogurt should work)

1. Heat the oil over medium flames and cook the grated carrots with salt and pepper until they're about half done, you want them still crunchy. Frankly I don't know why you want to half cook them but the chef on our blue cruise (who taught me the recipe) said to do it. When they're (half) done set them aside to cool.
2. Crush the garlic cloves and combine them with the yogurt.
3. When the carrots are cool, combine them with the yogurt and let your taste buds explode!