Wine Tasting in Turkey Part I

From Istanbul to Chateau Nuzum- our first stop of wine tasting. I found a wine club on Internations- a great expat website, and learned of this wine tour that would tour north west Turkey. I signed up as fast as the internet would navigate me through its pages. The bus picked us up at 7am and we hit the vineyards and began the wine tasting day at 9:45 am. It's five o'clock somewhere, right? Our little English speaking bus consisted of Americans, Poles, Canadians, Aussies, Brits, South Koreans and Turks. Our little bus that could scooted up the hills along the Marmara coast, skirting the water and allowing us to enjoy the views of early morning ocean glitter. Our guide's name is Hakan- a Turk who studied in Australia. He gave us a brief history of wine in Turkey. Interestingly enough, Raki remains the national alcoholic beverage- and wine still has a connotation of being a Christian drink. But, in fact, a Turkish wine culture is slowly developing. For all you wine lovers up there, Turkish wine differs largely by region. We tasted mostly cabernets, syrahs and merlots.
During our first stop, at Chateau Nuzum, we learned that they keep the skin on the grapes during processing from anywhere between 10 days to 4 weeks, depending on the pH balance and the intensity of the grape. They also "fire toast" the insides of the barrels in order to emit flavors of the wood- or chocolate or vanilla, or whatever. So smoky, more complex wines are probably in a fired barrel. They slightly char the insides with fire. We tasted both "lightly toasted" and"medium toasted" wines though every time he said toasted, I wanted to ask for the butter. (Bad joke, I know) Apparently, 95% of wine are produced and immediately distributed and consumed. The other 5% of wines are stored for aging. That's the stuff you shell out the Benjamin's for.
After departing the vineyard we headed to our lunch destination overlooking the sea. Check out my food page on the blog for details on the food! We munched on mezze, we devoured our meats, and we molested our desserts. But paired along with our 5 course meal were 8 different local wines. 8. Guys, that is a lot of wine. After wine tasting. I sipped verrrryyy slowly, as we had a long windy bus ride along the coast ahead of us.  We then drove through Ericlice- a teeny tiny city by the sea, remembered for its vast agricultural products and the single wharf stretching out onto the water- constructed with pieces of broken fences, and looked like a lawn-mower spat out its wood which just happened to make a wharf. We arrived in Murefte, and sat on the edge of their pier and watched the mesmerizing movements of jellyfish in the Marmara. We visited their wine museum and tried several of their aged local wines. Yep, that's right guys. We are up to about wine #13 or #14. I lost count. After strolling along the coastline and chatting over chai, we plopped back into the bus and onto our next destination. (to be continued...)