Kuzubağ Çal Karası Kalecik Karası Rosé 2025
£14.25
The wine
A subtle salmon-coloured rosé blending two treasured indigenous black varieties. çal Karası gives strawberry and cherry aromas while Kalecik Karası contributes body, darker red fruit and a hint of spice. Intense red-berried flavours are complemented by fresh citrus and bright acidity.
Both grapes are Turkish natives and neither is grown in any quantity outside the country. Kalecik Karası takes its name from the town of Kalecik near Ankara, where it was rescued from near extinction in the 1970s by researchers at Ankara University who found a handful of surviving vines.
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.
