Carpetblogger

The Best $3.60 Bottle of Wine You Will Ever Drink

It's no secret that we have a poorly concealed ladycrush on Georgia. We have written about it frequently, so much so that some of our favorite Carpetblog posts were written in or about Georgia. We fail to understand why our adventure-seeking, sybaritic Istanbul contemporaries have not yet shelled out the $300 for the two-hour flight to Tbilisi for a weekend. Do they not know passport control officers give you a bottle of wine after they stamp your passport? We have often worried that, in a haze of propagandizing, we have oversold the place. This has never happened. After a decade of living and travelling around the world, Georgia remains our favorite country, full stop, and everyone who has surrendered to our pleas to go agrees.

We just spent five days there, celebrating the fourth-annual Thanksgiving throwdown -- always a highlight of our year. After the turkey funk wears off, we try to do something somewhat adventurous. One year we visited the village of Sighnaghi, another year we cluelessly watched Georgia stomp the US in rugby, last year we went to the high Caucasus village of Gudauri. Each activity usually shares in common excessive consumption of food, wine and/or chacha. Things were a bit tamer than normal this year, mostly because key rogue elements stayed home.

Alaverdi Monastery

We headed out to the Schuchmann winery in the Kakheti wine region. This was the first time we'd been out to this eastern Georgia valley, which is crammed up right to the base of the snow-dusted Caucasus, a view we've come to love and miss.

Overall, the German-owned lodge and restaurant were a bit disappointing. They were well-appointed but with service so sweetly incompetent that we commented "What this place needs is some Turks to whip it into shape." Thse are neither words we frequently say nor words Germans want to hear, but Turks can usually run a hotel pretty well.

 But let's talk about the important thing: the quality of Schuchmann's wine, which was fantastic. We didn't get the tour we'd hoped for but we tried a variety of their wines, both European- style (aged in steel vats) and Kakhetian-style (aged in underground ceramic pots called Qvevri). We didn't much care for a traditional white called Kisi which tasted like it had gone off but apparently, we were told, it's supposed to taste like that. We much preferred the European-style 2008 Saperavi, the cabernet-like red for which Georgia is best known. They also have a 2008 Saperavi, but aged in Qvevri. We might have tried it. It can be hard to keep track.

Old Qvevri

Sometimes, after drinking a lot of wine, we worry that our judgment gets impaired --  there's plenty of hard data to suggest this is more than a vague perception -- and that the wine we've drunk a lot of isn't quite as good as it was on that cold night in front of a fire at the foot of the Caucasus with a friend.

The next morning, these residual warm feelings drove us to buy six bottles of the European-style Saperavi. The possiblity that we could be making a mistake occured to us. But, and here's the rub, it was only 6 Lari ($3.60) per bottle*. We figured it was low risk investment and it's not like it could be any worse than a 25 TL ($14) bottle of Turkish.

This, officially, is our favorite cheap wine, possibly ever. We served it at dinner last night with a bit of trepidation given our clouded judgment that night. The reaction was strongly positive. We concluded that it is actually too good to serve to the common riffraff who typically dine chez Carpetblogger.

So this is what we suggest: Germans at Schuchmann, bring in some Turks in to clean up the service at the hotel/restaurant so it justifies the rather steep rate. In exchange, teach the Turks how to make a decent wine. This is a win-win situation. We are happy to facilitate.

 

 *That's the price at the winery with a tax-free card. It was 8 Lari without the card and 10 Lari ($6) in the supermarket in center Tbilisi. This a deal at all those prices. The 2008 Khakheti-style Saperavi was 30 Lari ($18) at the winery. The labor-intensive Qvevri aging explains the substantially higher price. We can't recall trying it so can't comment on whether it's worth it. It probably is.

Caretblog Recommends: Istanbul Eats Walking Tours

Frankly, it's not that hard to obtain the Carpetblog stamp of approval. We're not out to diminish our own brand or anything, but really, with a few exceptions taken on moral grounds, we'll shill for almost all of our friends.

Indeed, we have in the past shilled for Istanbul Eats, not just out of affection for its founders, but because it is the best guide to eating in this city. We use it all the time (IE recs got us to try current faves Datli Maya and Mohti) and recommend it to everyone.

We have also always recommended IE's culinary walking tours, even though we had never taken one, or, until very recently, known anyone who had. That's how important our credibility is.

But after dear friends visiting from San Francisco last month raved about the tour and promptly signed up to do a second one, we thought maybe we had been missing out on something important and fun. In fact, we were more than a little embarassed when walking around town with them, sharing all our greatest insights about the mysteries of the city such as the difference between dana and koyun işkembe, they said, "oh yes, our guide Angelis already told us that."

So when Carpetblog's Kosovo Korrespondent suggested we do a Festivus Day tour, led by that Greek Angelis Nannos who really made us look bad to our guests, we said, "well, ok."

Have you ever visited your friend in Istanbul and noticed that she doesn't really know anything about the city and seems to be making shit up, or takes you to the places closest to her apartment? Well, Angelis isn't like that. He's your cool friend in Istanbul who really does know good places in unlikely neighborhoods and loves to show them to you with great enthusiasm. Who knows? Maybe he can be your new friend in Istanbul. Other people seem to like him.

Would you travel across town for a doner? We sure as hell wouldn't, not before visting a hole-in-the-wall döner place in the back streets Küçükpazar (you don't even know where that is, do you?), where the dönerci marinates real lamb meat in onion juice overnight and alternates layers of meat and vegetables. Do you think a pide is just beyaz peynir and sucuk toasted on some dough? Try adding Black Sea magic village butter to the crust at a place in Fatıh that, to some skepticism, claims to be the first Pideci in Istanbul. Do you think Turkish Delight is gross? Well it is, but you might find some that's at least not made of rubber in the back streets of Eminönü. Have you tried kokoreç? After five years in Istanbul, we finally did and it's not as bad as we expected. That white matter at the tip of the knife in the photo? Suet. Yum.

This is just a long way of saying that Carpetblog stands by our endorsement of Istanbul Eats' Culinary Walking Tours and has forgiven Angelis for making us look dumb to our visitors. Also, we know from reliable sources that IE's Meghan gives excellent tours as well, even though we haven't been on hers.

And, as long as we're sharing love, we haven't shilled for Istanbul Personal Shopper in a long time. Like IE's food tours, Kathy takes visitors to parts of the Grand Bazaar people who have lived here for years don't know about. The best part? Your visitors will love the tour and you won't have to go to the Grand Bazaar. Everyone wins!

If we were in the FSU, we would pull out our stamp and stamp our approval on both.

Carpetblog Guide to Istanbul Cliches

Are you a writer visiting Istanbul for the first time, or the eleventy-millionth? Do you like giving your readers a sense of place that you manufactured after 31 hours on the ground? Do you want to nail the mysteries of a 7000 year old city in a country with 75 million people in 500 words or less? Then this guide is indispensable. Read carefully and chose your cliche wisely. Whatever you do, do not look at this link.

Mini Skirts and Minarets: Istanbul has both! What an amazing contrast! Very little more needs to be said. If you manage to get this alliterative classic in your lede or headline, you are champion. Move to the front of the line.

Bridge Between East and West: Did you know Istanbul straddles two continents, and there are some  bridges? It should be news to everyone who has never looked at a map. This is a powerful metaphor and it cannot be overused. Every article should reinforce it because it absolves you of any further responsibility for explaining why it is important or how it is playing out today, giving you more time for you to try.....

Apple Tea: Did you sip a mixture of delicious hot chemicals while admiring Turkish carpets lovingly handcrafted in Pakistani factories? Tell us more about this Turkish classic that can only be found in Sultanahmet.

Turkey Is Looking East. There may be some people who have missed this critical message, which, by decree of the Ministry of Drop-In Journalism, must appear in every article written since the Gaza Flotilla Incident.

X Incident Will Affect Turkey's EU Accession Hopes in Y Way: Show your sophisticated knowledge of Euroaffairs by viewing every policy or political decision made by Turkey through the prism of its hopes of joining the EU. Of course Turkey's highest aspiration, with an economy that was second only to China's in first quarter expansion (be sure to click through to read some awesomeness in the headline and lede!), should be to help prop up third world economies and political systems like Greece's, Bulgaria's and Romania's.

In your defense, you say, "Carpetblogger! But aren't bridges between continents and minarets and girls in headscarves walking arm in arm with other girls in miniskirts powerful visual images you can see every day in Istanbul that tell us a lot about The Way We Live Now? These are important and should appear on my blog, which is read by tens of people! Why do you have to be so cynical about everything? And anyway, this is what editors want because they are lazy and lack imagination!"

We are, as a matter of policy, favorably disposed to giving those in a position to allocate funds whatever they want, when they want it, no matter how lazy or unimaginative. And, our resistance to common visuals associated with Istanbul may suggest that we have become inured to lovely images that can be compelling to people who don't look at them every single day. We will keep an open mind about this suggestion. The accusation of cynicism stands undisputed.

However, this topic generated some debate at the recent Foundry Photojournalism Workshop we attended. A presentation of a series entitled "Liberal and Conservative in Istanbul," commissioned by a German news magazine and shot by a well-known photojournalist, evoked negative reactions from some who live here for its cliched images and for completely missing the story. Were we the only ones who noticed? Did those who live elsewhere find it more appealing? Was the photographer simply presenting the audience with images that confirmed its preconceptions (it was for the Germans, after all, who have their own ways of thinking about Turkey), at the expense of "reality?" These are all important questions. We don't know the answer!

Send us your favorite examples of Istanbul cliches in articles and photos. If they weren't written or shot by a friend, we'll post them here for critique. Actually, especially if they were written or shot by a friend, we'll post them here for critique.

And! There are lots of photographers and writers covering Turkey whose work we respect because they get past the cliches. We are happy to share those links. But, we can probably get another post out of it and don't give that sort of publicity away for free so it will have to wait.