WTN: Turkish wines

For the past week I've been travelling through the (mostly) lesser known areas of Turkey looking for interesting archaeological sites. 14-18h work days were occasionally made more relaxing by sharing the odd bottle of wine.

First up was a cheap little white, Kavaklıdere Angora 2015, from the Sultaniye grape and grown in the Denizli region. Sultana is not a grand grape by any means but it is a clean, refreshing drop. Not something you would spit out after hard day walking through mountainous terrain.

The next day we had another wine from the biggest producer in Turkey, Kavaklıdere Ancyra Kalecik karası 2014, this time just with another spelling of the capital's name. Kalecik karası is a fascinating grape: not so heavy as many others grown here, high in acidity, making a range of styles from light Gamay-like wines to something more substantial and meaty. This was a decent but not really exciting version of the grape: sweet fruit, on the bigger end of the Kalecik karası spectrum but still with wonderfully refreshing structure. Nice, but there are so many other better producers making more exciting wines in Turkey.

In Cappadocia we of course tried the local produce. We simply did not have time to visit any wineries but Kocabağ was easy to find in local shops and restaurants. The producer is based in Üçhisar near the touristy town of Göreme. We tried two wines from them: the Öküzgözü 2013 and the Boğazkere 2014. I liked both. The Öküzgözü was a big, ripe almost Shirazy wine but with good, refreshing tannins. The Boğazkere was a lighter wine and more to my taste for being so: if any comparison can be made to well known grapes this would be Pinot to the Ökü's Shiraz. But both were fun wines.

From Cappadocia we took a bottle of Turasan Narince 2014 with us since we would stay the night at Konya, Turkey's most conservative city where wine is not easy to come by. I was sure it would be corked since we had such phenomenally bad luck that day. The first setback was that we did several Byzantine sites in remote places and were running late so didn't have time for the neolithic Çatalhöyük. Then we nearly ran out of gas and only just made it to a petrol station. There they put the wrong type of petrol in our car so we stalled 20km outside of Konya. Finally we got that sorted out and we got to town and everything but a single kebab place was closed so we bought some to take to the hotel. At the hotel we find out that the key didn't work and that the kebab place had given us something completely different than what we ordered. But anyway, only 5h later than we thought, we were in Konya, finally got into our rooms, had a bit of food we didn't want but ate anyway because we could not get anything else. And amazingly the wine wasn't corked. It was warm and we only had water glasses to drink it out of but it was nice. Peachy & mineral; full body, not terribly acidic but somehow, even when warm, was refreshing. The night's ordeal might have something to do with that, however.

Now back in civilization in Istanbul, tonight we had dinner at Solera, a wine bar + restaurant in Beyoğlu. The steak was great and they have a superb selection of Turkish wine, many of them available by glass. Chamlija is a Thracian producer that I've heard much good about so we ordered their Papazkarası 2014. It was wonderful. They have a pretty "natural" philosophy to making wine but it is certainly not in the freaky end of the spectrum. The wine was clean and savoury with vibrant fruit kind of a like a good Cru Beaujolais but with a bit more beefiness. Racy and moreish. Lovely wine. I really don't think this would look bad served beside something perfect like Foillard's Morgon.

I also tried a couple tastes of a few other interesting local wines. Arda Narince 2014 was a peachy, mineral and softly acidic white, very pleasant and genuinely interesting though usually I prefer higher acidity. Somehow it was still refreshing and moreish and felt like it almost had some tannic grip to it. Gordias Kalecik karası 2012 was another KK that was on the rich side of the spectrum for the grape. It had pretty aromatics but those aromatics were also pretty funky so not all might appreciate it. Very high acidity but also very pretty sour cherry (Vişne) aromas. I thought it was very tasty.

Very informative Otto...did you take any pics?

Otto, did you get the impression that a lot of Turks drink wine? I'm always sceptical about wine from a country where alcohol consumption is forbidden by the dominant religion. I guess that the secularisation put in place by Kemal may have removed a lot of inhibitions, even if Erdogan is trying to put them back.

Bob, literally thousands. That was my main objective: to travel to interesting archaeological sites and photograph them.

Tim, most Turks I know are very liberal. I was just speaking with a local archaeologist about the rise in Islamism and the recent attempts to make it a less secular state. He was of the opinion that the majority of Turks want a liberal, secular state and it's only something like a very noisy 10-20% that actually want something different. Though obviously this is a skewed view since we both know mostly academic people who in general tend to be more secular and liberal than average anyway. But you're wrong about Islam and alcohol. There are many different views on the topic within Islam and not all even today are against alcohol. Historically speaking we are now at an all time low for tolerance towards alcohol in Islam and the rabid bans on it are something very new, really only having happened in the past 50 or so years.