Kuzubağ Haziran 2022
£14.45
The wine
Haziran means June, the month when the vines bloom and the fruit sets, and the estate intend the wine to carry that sense of beginning. The local öküzgözü is blended with international varieties, giving abundant fruit with a slight touch of oak.
öküzgözü means ox eye, a reference to the size and darkness of its berries. It comes from Elazig in eastern Anatolia and is one of Turkey's two most important red grapes, giving high acidity, moderate tannin and bright red fruit, which is precisely what keeps a blend with Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz from becoming heavy.
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.
