Akberg Şirince Shiraz 2005

Akberg Şirince Shiraz 2005

Akberg Sirince Shiraz 2005 is another wine that we bought when we travelled through Sirince. This wine was a surprising experience for me. First, the color was a fresh, dark red. Altough I know that Shiraz usually produces lively & dark red wines, considering that this is a wine of 2005, I expected a little paler color from this wine. Apparently, this wine was not that old.

When I smelled and tasted the wine, I became doubtfull about the grape, whether it was really Shiraz. As far as I know, Shiraz usually produces rather round wines with rich and complex fruity aromas. This wine rather presents an incomplex, cherry like flavor and quite bitter taste that feels like tasting an anripe fruit. This was not a bitterness to make a face, but is rather a bitterness like the tannin caused bitterness of Bogazkere.

When I tasted the wine after two hours of aeration in a big glass, the wine was softer, less bitter, and less sharp in smell and taste. Still, the bitterness was standing in the forefront according to me. Each time I tasted the wine, I felt like tasting an anjelique plum that is not ripe enough. Additionally, I noted that  the wine had  thin-medium body, moderate acidity, marked tannin and a rather short ending.

I used a wine stopper with vacuum to close the bottle. After 2-3 days, the wine was still there without losing anything. I wonder if this can be a sign showing that the wine has a potential to age for more years.

Would I try this wine again? Well, I prefer to discover other wines instead of rediscovering this one, but if you would like to try a local wine in Sirince, Artemis would be certainly a good choice.

Vacuum Wine Stopper

You can't buy small bottles of wine in Turkey. We are a family of two, so we buy everthing in small packages, but unfortunately not wine. Wines is almost always offered in bottles of 750 ml.

This is a problem because, you can't open a wine and put it simply in the refrigerator and continue to drink it all week. The taste changes significantly, especially after 2-3 days. There is a simple solution for this, which I discovered unfortunately very late.

This is a vauum wine stopper. Do you know how difficult it is to find it in Turkey? I found this one in France, in a souvenir shop of a monestery! I am sure that you don't have to go that far to find it, but I still bought it when I saw it in France. Just because, hmm, why not?

For those who don't know how this works, I'm going to try to explain it. The small part in the picture is a stopper. The bigger part is something like a pump. You set it on the stopper, and you move it as if you are pumping air in it until you hear a "click". You are actually taking air from the bottle.

You can open a bottle now, without worrying about whether you will be able to finish it or most of it will be wasted. You can trust that your wine will be safe for days, much more than 2-3 days, as long as you close it with the vacuum stopper. Just remember that you can't easily open the sopper if you vacuumed the air from the bottle.

Amadeus Cabernet Sauvignon 2010

This is the first time that I tasted a wint of Amadeus thanks to a good friend, who recently went to Bozcaada for vacation, admired the island, and returned with this wine as a gift to me.

This is Amadeus Cabernet Sauvignon 2010. Considering that we are in October 2011, I wondered if it was too early to drink this wine. Curiosity won the battle and I opened the bottle.

When I tasted the wine immediately after opening the bottle, I couldn't sense anything but the intense taste of alcohol. After half an hour, I noticed that the taste of alcohol was softening and the fruity aromas started to appear slowly. After a period of aeration, the wine became a full bodied wine with intense taste and long, strong ending. However, the taste of alcohol was still to strong for me. I thought may be the reason for this was that the wine was too young, even immature. I don't really know if the strong taste of alcohol can be related to the age of the wine. I hope someone knows about it and shares their comments with us here.

M. Chapoutier Petite Ruche Crozes Hermitage (2009)

Les Lyonnais

We had a lovely dinner in Lyon in a restaurant called Les Lyonnais. The watier (I believe he was the chief and the manager at the same time) was a friendly man with good sense of homour.

I took the card in the picture before I left the restaurant. There is a link on the card. When you click on the link, you will see several pictures. The only one that looks like the restaurant where we had our dinner is the picture on the right, in the middle vertically showing red walls and wooden chairs.

We had a reservation at 8.00pm, but we were free at 7.00pm, so we went to a bar for a drink. It was a bar with old looking furniture with red velvet sofas. I felt like in my grandmother's house. 

M. Chapoutier Petite Ruche Crozes Hermitage 

Eventually, we were starving when we went to the restaurant at 8.00. We couldn't order our meal for about 40 minutes, which, I understand, is normal for southern France. I think they see it impolite to serve quickly and therefore, they leave you enough time to enjoy your evening. Of course it doesn't feel very good if you are starving :) Anyway, I ordered some meat and told that I wanted to have it "well done". Altough I like to try new tastes, the French way of meat cooking - which is basically not cooking according to me- is a little too much for me. I respect their confidence in their style, but I prefer not to see any blood in my plate.

Then, it was the time to choose wine and we asked his advice. He told us that the wine in the picture is a nice wine from Rhone valley. It was a really nice, medium bodied, fruity wine with a little fume cheese aroma. We liked it very much and felt lucky to enjoy our last food and wine in France in this lovely place.

Istanbul is raising a toast

Doluca has a campaign called "Istanbul is raising a toast". This is an organization that basically provides anopportuinity to order certain wines in glasses in certain places. Those wines are mostly the wines that cannot be ordered in glass normally. So, on 19-30 October, you can go one of the restaurants listed here and order some of the wines in their menu (chosen from this list) in glass. If you like it, you could always order them with the whole bottle!

3. Kanyon Wine Tasting Days

There will be a wine tasting fair in Kanyon (Istanbul) again, between 21-23 October. You can see the detailed program here.

I attended this event previously. There was a very nice atmophere. There were basically tens of wines and you could taste any of them! So, it's worth to be there.

Edit: This event has been postponed as announced here (there isn't an english version of this announcement).

Giulio de' Medici Chianti

Giulio de' Medici

When we were in Nimes (France), we had a dinner in a lovely Italian restaurant, Danieli. Considering that it would be a good idea to eat a local food together with local wine, we ordered the onlu Chianti in the menu.

Before going into details of the wine, I'd like to mention that I had a great Ravioli filled with cheese. It was much better than I expected. It was cooked in cassarole and of course some parmesan was on top of it. I know discovering local food is part of travelling, but if you happen to go Nimes, my advise would be; don't insist on a French restaurant so much! Trying Italian food for one night wouldn't harm.

The wine was also good. I don't know which grapes were used for it. I don't really know much about Chianti wines, but I plan to learn and share with you soon. I just know that Chianti is the name used for some portion of Tuscany, where winemakers are densely located. Anyway, it was a light wine with thin body, a little grassy aromas and relatively low alcohol (12,5%). We liked and anjoyed it.