Turkish Wine of the Week - Pamukkale 2015 Sole and 2014 Diamond

I recently saw an Instagram post from Pamukkale showing several new wines and I had to try them. I'm a bit of a magpie and am attracted to shiny/sparkly objects so the label of Pamukkale's new Sole line attracted me right away. And for 16 TL how can you go wrong?

Normally Pamukkale is not one of my go-to producers. For one thing they're responsible for Sava which is one of the cheapest wines available here and gives a bad name to vinegar. However since I can't afford to spend 90+ TL on every bottle of wine I drink I am always looking for quality inexpensive wines. I don't promise huge quality here, but Pamukkale's white Sole, which is a dry Sultaniye, is pretty quaffable.

Brilliant gold in the glass it's very aromatic with a nose of flowers and tropical fruits. It is a little flabby, there's not a lot of acid to balance the flavor which becomes a problem as the wine warms up so serve this right out of the refrigerator and you'll still get the tropical flavors without the lack of acid making things awkward.

If you decide to give this one a try make sure you drink it within a few months of purchasing it and you store it out of the light. Clear bottles like this provide no protection for the wine inside opening the wine to major sun damage.

The Diamond is another newish line from Pamukkale and also only 16 TL a bottle (The Cave) it's actually not a horrible wine. I bought it a bit on impulse but then was reluctant to open it; I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

  

In the glass it's a rather beautiful color: brilliant clear wheat-gold. I'm not sure what the grape in the Diamond is because I am no where near that good yet (possible another Sultaniye-Pamukkale seems to like this grape) but whatever it was has a very fruity nose. There's not a great deal of finish to this but the mouthwatering acid and dry, slightly oaky finish balanced well with the citrus, tropical, apple and floral flavors.

 

Is this even in the top 20 white wines I've tried this summer? No. But will you embarrass yourself if you take it to a party? Also no. For 16 TL it's really perfectly drinkable.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Papazın Şarabı 2012 Sauvignon Blanc Sauvignon Gris

I don't actually know where the Papazın Şarabı/Palivor Çiftliği crossover happens. I did some light Googling and couldn't find the connection but it was the Palivor Çiftliği logo that got me to buy this so whatever the partnership is Papazın Şarabı owes at least one sale to them. Truly I bought this bottle because there's a buck on the label and I thought it would amuse my Daddy who is a hunter.

This was not a light decision to pick up. Sure I got a giggle over the buck on the label but at 80TL from Carrefour this wasn't a small investment, especially considering that the last time I tangled with a Sauvignon Gris I was utterly unimpressed.

In the glass it's a clear, pale gold with a lot of citrus, white flowers, and a little oaky something in the nose. This one could definitely use a little breathing time as initially the acid was quite high, giving a bit of a fizz on the tongue like a Lambrusco. Once it opened up and the fizz died down it was actually rather creamy in the mouth but no finish to speak of. The aromas carried through to the palate with white flowers and a lemon/lime citrus but also with a little bit of orange at the tail end.

In the end what this was was a porch wine. It's an easily sipable wine for the afternoon you're out enjoying your garden in the sun and don't want a super challenging beverage. I won't say that it was worth 80TL, but I did not regret the money spent.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Visiting Edirne and the Arda Winery

Happily day two in Edirne was only about 35-36 C and not 38 because we had to bundle up several times to visit some more mosques.We started the day at the Eski Camii (Old Mosque) located just down the street from the Selimiye Mosque.

This is possibly the most uniquely decorated mosque I've ever visited. Rather than tiles or frescoes, the Old Mosque, completed in 1414, is almost stark of decoration except for the giant Arabic calligraphy inscriptions that dominate the walls and pillars.

After a morning wandering around the Old Mosque and the arasta (bazaar) we headed back to our hotel to check out. We stayed at the Ottoman Palace Hotel which is situated pretty centrally in Edirne. A perfectly decent hotel for the ridiculously low price (about $30/night for a large single) and the owners were very friendly. I'd stored a couple bottles of wine in their refrigerator which sparked a conversation with the owner about Turkish wines. As we were leaving he gave me a bottle of wine that his family makes for themselves!

From our hotel we headed down the street to the Üç Şerefeli Camii (Mosque of the Three Balconies). This stunning mosque, completed in 1447, was impressive even before we got into the courtyard. From outside the wall we could see that not only were the minarets decorated, they were all done in different styles.

Inside was equally lovely with soaring domes and lots of light and space. What I particularly liked was how no space was too small to decorate. Even the inside of the small domes are beautifully decorated. As sad as it is to see the country so devoid of tourists the selfish side of me enjoys it when I can walk into a mosque, museum, church, etc and not have a ton of people in my photos!

In an effort to cover all the major religions in one day, we left this mosque in search of Edirne's Great Synagogue-of which I have no pictures because we got there to find the tall gates closed and locked. I spoke to the group of guards and we discovered that the synagogue was closed only that day. Argh! E&M tried to convince them to let us take a sneak peek but they weren't falling for it. So if you visit Edirne and want to see the Great Synagogue, don't go on a Monday!

We tried out luck next with the Christians of Edirne and drove through some narrow, tricky streets to try to find the Bulgarian church of Sveti Georgi (and don't think there weren't jokes around a mispronunciation of sveti). We got there, after successfully parallel parking no less, only to discover another closed gate-this one topped with razor wire. This was apparently not to be our day of being inclusively religious.

 

After our disappointments at the synagogue and church we were ready for some good luck which we found at one of my favorite wineries, the Edirne-based boutique winery Arda. Easily spotted from the road, the Arda winery-recognizable from the labels-sits on a vine covered hill that rises above the road. We drove through the vineyard and were slightly taken aback to find a large backhoe digging out the earth along the back wall of the winery. Sadly Arda was having a problem with damp and while the naturally well-irrigated soils are great for the vines, they weren't doing so much for the winery and its contents.

We had a great visit there, fully making up for the day's earlier failures. We met Yavuz who told us how his family got started in the wine business and about the wins they are currently producing. While I asked all my usual wine questions (root stock, irrigation, harvest, barrel ageing etc) we sampled a wide range of the wines. Arda produces three levels of wine: 

• Sekiz Dokuz: This, their low-end wine is named after the 8/9 rhythm of Gypsy music and is usually sold in bulk for banquets and large events
• Kuşlar: This mid-priced wines cover a large number of varietals including: Narince, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, and Cabernet-Merlot blend and are among the best mid-priced wines you can get. The Cabernet is one of my go-to wines and even for a non Syrah fan like me, the Shiraz isn't bad. 
• Reserve: These higher priced wines are well worth the buck (or TL I suppose), especially if you can buy them at the winery where they're far more reasonably priced. The reserve line includes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet-Merlot blend, and Shiraz

Of course I wasn't going to waste the opportunity to buy wine at the winery price; especially since there were several wines there that I haven't seen in Istanbul. I also snagged two of their last four bottles of Narince! Arda is not widely available even in Istanbul but you can find them at Solera (Beyoglu-Yeni Carsi Cd.) and at the wine/whiskey store in Karakoy I can never remember the name of. Helpful I know but it's somewhere near the iskele and offers significantly lower prices.


Arda 2013 Narince: A brilliant, pale yellow in the glass with a very floral, plumeria, and pineapple nose. On the palate it was creamy giving evidence to time spent in oak with bursting flavors of white pineapple, citrus, and white flowers. I'm so sorry that I only bought two bottle of the Narince because it was gorgeous-easily the nicest Narince I've had. And to the sadness of everyone at my Arda tasting, the second bottle was corked. There were tears.

The Cabernet I have reviewed before (see the link referenced above) so I won't rehash that here other than to say it's a lovely medium-bodied Cabernet with a lot of red berry, particularly raspberry flavors.

Arda 2013 Reserve Cabernet-Merlot blend: This has only recently been released and, at the time of our visit, wasn't yet available in Istanbul. You should be on the look out for it though because even for a Merlot naysayer like myself this 50/50 blend was beautiful. Eighteen months in oak (and three in the bottle) and limited filtration gives this blend a beautiful dark garnet color and adds some fascinating oak characteristics without stripping the berry flavors. The nose is redolent with pine forest, forest fruits, chocolate, and clove. In the mouth the tannins are soft and silky and with the black fruit, vanilla, and mocha flavors give a luscious drinking experience.

 

Arda 2012 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon: This one is so beautiful it gets its own picture which I took ages ago when M grilled steaks the size of our heads. Cabernet Sauvignon is often a wine that wants meat and Arda's reserve is no different.

Arda took the Mondus Vini Silver with this wine in the 16th Grand International Wine Awards, and it was well deserved. In the glass it's an intense, beautiful, purple red. The 18 months it spent in oak was obvious right from nose as the tart, dark fruit aromas were accompanied by chocolate and cinnamon. In the mouth the tannins are velvety and long like the finish. A really long finish that just kept going carrying with it the flavors from the nose: bilberry, chocolate, and cinnamon.

Side note: I had to Google bilberry because I've never had one. I was tasting blueberry but not really blueberry and it turns out that the bilberry is a wild, European cousin of the blueberry more similar in flavor to the American huckleberry (which I've also never had so that wasn't all that helpful).

So Arda; beautiful wines made with care and dedication and absolutely worth the effort to track down if you're not near Edirne.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Arcadia 2012 Gri

I bought this a little hesitantly since I had bad luck with Arcadia's Sauvignon Gris but my friends at Solera promised me it would be good and they have yet to steer me wrong. And I'll give another chance to anyone who uses peacocks on all its labels. At I think only 75 TL (minus the 25% take away discount) this one isn't cheap, but it won't break the bank.

Brilliant pale gold in the glass at least this Arcadia was starting off on a pretty foot. The nose was also quite lovely with white flowers, melon, and tropical notes with an underlying sweetness (probably the flowers). On the palate it was all zesty acid and citrus with tropical notes and more flowers.

The guys at Solera are rarely wrong, I did indeed like this one. This could pair very well with food but was also quite enjoyable on its own. I'm not waxing poetic as I often do for the red wines, but more white wines like this and the Kayra Viognier and I might stop drinking white wines only in the summer.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Amadeus MMX 2015 Gelber Muskateller

What is Gelber Muskateller? you ask. It's Muscat, or technically yellow Muscat. How is that different from any of the other Muscats I've reviewed? It's not really, it's the same grape. It just happens to be one of the German names (there are unbelievably almost 300 variations on the grape name!).

German white wines like Riesling and Gewürztramiener often get a bad rap as being syrupy sweet dessert wines when really that's not the case. German and Alsace Riesling, Gewürztramiener, and Muscat wines are usually produced as dry wines, not sweet. While Austrians tend to grow more of their native Grüner Veltliner, they also produce dry Riesling, Gewürztramiene, and Muscat. I assume that Amadeus chose to name the wine after the German name for the grape since they produced it in much the same manner as would the Germans and Austrians.

To be honest I was more than a little hesitant to buy this even though it was only 45 TL. I've had a bad Amadeus experience before which made me a little gun shy and the guys at the Cave are pushing this one hard. They do annoy me a bit sometimes. If I ask for a recommendation please give me one, but if I go in an tell you that I know exactly what I'm looking for and I want only those specific wines, stop trying fob other wines off on me.

Rant aside, honestly this wasn't too bad. At 14.5% it has a rather high alcohol content for a white wine but made for some beautiful legs in the glass as I swirled the bright gold wine. The nose was very tropical with floral, possibly honeycomb tones. It also felt really good in the mouth with a nice mouthwatering acid to balance the sweetness coming from the high alcohol and a smooth, clean, medium finish that carried through the aromas from the nose.

Honestly this was a lot nicer than I was expecting considering my reluctance to purchase Amadeus wines in general and the less than suave, beat you over the head with the wine bottle sales tactic from the guys at the Cave. I think I need to give Amadeus wines another try.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Arcadia 2012 Pinot Gris

Recently I let the guys at La Cave talk me into another bottle of wine. I do need more whites now that summer is on and at only 49 TL I wasn't risking too much with this one. Plus I liked the art work. I'm not usually a huge fan of Pinot Gris. Like Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, also known as Pinot Grigio, wines have a wide range of flavors depending on whether they were grown in cool climates (Italy and most of the USA/Australia) or warm climates (the Alsace, France, Turkey). And as with Sauvignon Blanc I prefer the warmer climate "riper" styles but usually as a food wine.

Arcadia's 2012 Pinot Gris is a pretty nice example of a warmer climate style and given the price is actually a great bargain if you like this style of wine. While I was largely pleased with the flavor, again for me it was a food wine and my over all experience with this was enhanced a great deal by accompanying it with one of my favorite summer foods: chicken salad with red grapes and walnuts.

In the glass this estate-bottled Arcadia 2012 Pinot Gris is a beautiful gold color. For this particular wine, Arcadia uses limited filtration so there was some sediment in the glass-something I had not before encountered in a white wine. The nose was very citrusy which also came through on the palate-citrus, melon, honey, and a bit of something from the oak but I couldn't quite identify that. Like a cooler-climate Italian-style Pinot Gris, I also detected some minerality at the end of the finish. It seemed fairly high in acid, in fact that was my very first impression, but it smoothed out a little.

To be honest I liked this more than I thought I would and for only 49TL it's not a bad white to have on hand. However for me it was definitely a food wine and it definitely needed to be served quite cold.

Champagne Air and a Hipster Wine Festival

After two years of trying I was finally able to visit my good friend D in Bad Homburg, Germany. Bad Homburg, a suburb of Frankfurt, is one of the wealthiest districts in Germany which is pretty clear in the town's slogan: Champagnerluft und Tradition (Champagne Air and Tradition).

Bad Homburg Schloss

I don't know about the champagne but the air really was lovely! When I'm in Istanbul I don't usually realize how poor the air quality is but nothing drove that home until the morning after I arrived and D took me on a tour of Bad Homburg and its many (many) parks. There are very few things I miss about country life but the smell of clean air, trees, and grass is one of them. Possibly the only thing actually. The parks in Bad Homburg are gorgeous.

Kaiser Wilhelm II spa

Bad Homburg became a popular spa town in the 19th century and, situated in one of the parks, is the Kaiser Wilheml II spa. The spa takes advantage of the natural mineral water deposits and throughout the park you can find different drinking fountains with plaques to tell you the mineral composition of the water and which ailments its good for. I sampled several of the waters and have to say I think I'd rather have the ailments. The spa was lovely though. It consists of various rooms that, like the water, have different elements and minerals to benefit one's health. My favorite was the hay steam room in which you sit in a hay-lined alcove, are covered with a paper sheet so only your head sticks out the top, and hot steam pours through the hay. I don't remember what this was good for but I giggled the entire 15 minutes because it reminded me of sweating during hay season. I think my dad should build one of these in Michigan and charge all the city people who board their horses in his neighborhood ridiculous amounts of money for hay steams.

Bad Homburg casino

Bad Homburg is also home to a casino, built apparently by the brother team responsible for the Monte Carlo casino. I've never been to Monte Carlo but I have to say this is the most sedate and German-looking casino I've ever seen. We went one evening, not to gamble but to dance in the small club on the top floor. It was better people watching than it was dancing owing to a really uneven performance by the DJ...but it was still great fun.

One afternoon D and her family took me to nearby Mainz where we spent an overcast morning wandering around the cobbled streets. The historic center of Mainz is everything you want in a German town: cobbled streets, half-timbered buildings, Roman ruins, and beautiful, old churches.

For the purposes of my visit the most important feature was the river that runs through Mainz, the Rhein. Mainz is situated in the Rheingau-one of Germany's most important wine regions. I don't know much about German wine outside of Riesling and Gewürtztramiener so I did some research before going. The most cultivated grapes in the Rheingau are: Riesling, Spätburgunder, Dornfelder, Grauer Burgunder, Kerner, Dunkelfelder, Chardonnay, Ehrenfelser, Müller-Thurgau, and Weiẞer Burgunder. I had the opportunity to try several of these and a few others at the Wine is in the Air festival.

Without a doubt this was the most hipster wine festival I'd ever been to but despite that it was great fun and I really enjoyed being able to try a whole mess of German wines I'd not only never tried but never heard of before; like the bottle of Zwitschern that I bought to take back to Turkey.

In a trip that involved nature and clean air, spas and hay steams, dancing til 3 AM, the most amazing truffle pasta ever, karaoke until 3 AM and then skipping through Bad Homburg barefoot, practicing my German with a seven year old, and a hipster wine festival it's difficult to choose a highlight. For me of course it was being able to hang out and do all these things with a good friend I hadn't seen in six years but even if you don't have such an amazing friend and host waiting for you, Bad Homburg is definitely worth a visit!

Turkish Wine of the Week - Anfora 2014 Kalecik Karası-Shiraz Blush

While I still approach pink wines warily I am more open to at least trying then than I used to be. That does not mean that I go out of my way to buy them. It's not even a matter of going out of my way really, a pink wine could be sitting right in front of my and the likelihood of me buying it is still pretty slim.

However I have recently started holding Turkish wine tastings; informal parties at my place for my friends where the only rules are that you must bring a wine that is Turkish and is not DLC. If you don't live here and you don't know what DLC is count yourself lucky. As one of the goals of the tasting is to try a wide spectrum of Turkish wines at least one pink wine should make the roster.  At the inaugural meeting of Kitap Klübü Ezikler İçindir!* the pink wine was the Anfora 2014 Kalecik Karası-Shiraz Blush from Pamukkale.

 

Pale peachy pink in the glass the nose is very fruit forward with a lot of strawberries. On the palate it was off-dry with a subtle acidity and minerality. While I want to be diplomatic and say that while I don't see this particular blush bringing me any closer to being a fan of pink wines it wasn't bad...I just can't say that. I don't like pink wine-full stop. I have tried and as there are two more bottles in my fridge I will keep trying...but really just avoid this one.

I did not buy this so I cannot confidently say how much it was but my experience with Pamukkale wines said it was probably around 25TL and widely available at many of Turkey's grocery stores if you want a bottle of your very own despite my advice that don't.

*Book Club is for Suckers-you know if you've been in a book club the chances that you've actually read the book are slim because the group will talk about the book for maybe 5 minutes before delving into wine and gossip...we're skipping the books and going straight to the wine! We have T-Shirts.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Kayra Versus 2012 Viognier

I found this gem originally at Eleos on Istiklal. Aside from a truly respectable wine list, Eleos is worth a visit if you're a fan of fish, awesome views, and ridiculous amounts of free mezzes and desserts. Not paying for those leaves you free to pay the rather high ticket price of the Kayra Versus Viognier. Luckily if you buy it in a shop it's significantly less expensive (76 at Macro Center and 67 at La Cave-seriously). Regardless of what you pay though this wine is totally worth it, it's one of the most gorgeous wines I've had in a while.

In the glass the Viognier is a pale, clear yellow with no hints of green. The nose is white pepper, honeysuckle, orange flower, and vanilla bean. The latter two aromas I didn't pick up right away, I found them to be more subtle than the pepper and honeysuckle, but they are there and they are delightful.

In the mouth there's a nice amount of acidity balancing the flavors and a long finish of honeysuckle and vanilla. I think I may have also detected some melon and/or tropical notes and some citrus in the flavor.

It's lighter than Chamlija's Viognier which has more oak characteristics and while they're both gorgeous in their own ways, Kayra's Viognier is the far more easily drinkable. In fact it's dangerously drinkable as I proved by killing the bottle in one sitting. Go buy this. Like, right now.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Turasan 2015 Misket and A Bosphorus Cruise

Recently I discovered that a new friend owns a yacht. And while I would love to be friends with the idle rich O is not idle, she and her husband have a travel agency here in Istanbul and the yacht is one of the services they offer. However she kindly offered to take a bunch of us out a couple weeks ago for a Sunday Bosphorus cruise.

Ortakoy Mosque & the First Bridge

So on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon we all met at the Kabatas dock to board the Zoe in what was going to be a three hour tour (and don't think the Americans didn't giggle at that). Three hours turned into four and half as we cruised up the Bosphorus admiring the palaces and architecture along the way and stopping near the Black Sea, practically underneath the infamous Third Bridge, for a swim.

Anadoluhisari

Of course I wasn't going to miss the chance to sip a wine as I pretended to be idle rich myself. It's not everyday a girl gets invited aboard a yacht (although if anyone does have those days often please tell me how!). What wine would go better with a Sunday summer cruise than a semi sweet? So I broke out one of the Turasan wines I had shipped from the winery in Cappadocia: Turasan's 2015 Misket.

One of the things I like about Turkish Misket (or Muscat as most of us know it) is that they are generally of the semi sweet variety; they're not cloyingly sweet dessert wines. Turasan's isn't quite dessert-level sweet but it is sweeter than I like my Miskets.

In the glass it's, a bright, extremely pale yellow and smells, of all things, like champagne. I love aromatic white wines and Muscats usually deliver in that respect with a lot of floral and tropical notes. On the palate there was little acid and it felt a bit thick however some of that might well have to do with the fact that I wasn't drinking it at ideal serving temperature. A few degrees colder would have made a world of difference. The flavor was very nice following the aromas from the nose: tropical, citrus, and white flowers. I did not get the orange blossom though that I love so much in Miskets.

Maiden's Tower

Pricing on this one is a little difficult. I ordered directly from Turasan so I got the winery price of 28TL. The Cave sells these for mid/upper 30s, and Solera has a mid 50s price tag. It's worth the 28. At the risk of sounding like a credit card commercial, drinking it on a yacht on the Bosphorus, priceless!

The best thing about it? You can do it too if you're in the city! The Zoe is for hire for private events of I think 10-12 people. It was recently written up in The Guide Istanbul magazine and you can contact them for hire information via the Zoe Yacht Cruise Facebook Page. Bon Voyage!