Kuzubağ Çal Karası Blanc de Noirs 2025
£14.95
The wine
A blanc de noirs made from the indigenous variety çal Karası, showing aromas of lime and citrus with a touch of thyme and white spice. Dry and light bodied with high acidity, through to a saline finish and fresh minerality.
Blanc de noirs means white from blacks: a white wine made from dark-skinned grapes by pressing them gently and running the juice off the skins before it takes colour. The technique is familiar in Champagne but rare as a still wine. çal Karası is native to the çal district of Denizli and grown essentially nowhere else, and its naturally pale skins and high acidity suit the treatment unusually well.
The producer
Kuzubağ
View all Kuzubağ winesKuzubağ was founded in 2007 by Salih Kuzu and his daughter Aslı Kuzu, who planted vineyards in their hometown of çal in Denizli province, inland from the Aegean coast of Turkey.
They then waited. The vineyards were given thirteen years to mature before a winery was built, a 3,000 square metre building discreetly embedded into the landscape at the heart of the estate, and the first vintage was released only in 2021. That patience is unusual anywhere and almost unheard of in a young wine industry.
Turkey has the fourth largest area of vineyard in the world and produces very little wine from it: the overwhelming majority of its grapes are eaten fresh or dried into sultanas. It also holds an extraordinary genetic inheritance, with something between 800 and 1,200 indigenous varieties, since Anatolia is one of the places where the grapevine was first domesticated some 6,000 years ago. Kuzubağ work çal Karası, Kalecik Karası, öküzgözü and Narince alongside French varieties.
