Turkish Wine of the Week - Suvla 2014 Öküzgözü

It's been a while since we've featured a wine by Suvla. The problem with finding a wine producer that you really like is you (or I at least) burn through all their wines really fast and then there are no new wines to taste! That doesn't mean I'm not still drinking Suvla wines, in fact I had a bottle of their Boğazkere recently, but it does mean I don't post about them so often. However today we are talking about one of their newer wines, the 2014 Öküzgözü.

Öküzgözü grapes usually produce a softer light to medium body wine and Suvla's is no exception to that. On the nose I initially got light scents of cotton candy and raspberry which deepened with black mulberry, plum, and dried oregano as the wine opened. I thought I also may have got a bit of honey but since I was already a bottle in when we opened the Öküzgözü I might have just been a little tipsy.

On the palate: juicy forest berries, plum, dried herb. It was a little on the thin side for me, super low tannins, low medium acid, medium alcohol, not much of a finish. 

What I found very interesting about this wine was that the grapes come not from Suvla's vineyard in Gallipoli but from the Bekilli Vinyard in the Güney Plateau in Denizli where they were hand-picked and taken back to Gallipoli for processing.

I can't say that this was a very remarkable wine however that's not to do with any fault by Suvla. I tend to prefer Öküzgözü in a blend rather than on its own. If you prefer a softer red though this is a good choice wine for you and at only 29 TL (at Suvla) it won't hurt your pocketbook.