Turkish Wine Selection: Patkara
- Andrea Lemieux
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
This year, we’re shaking things up a little! Instead of having a featured wine trio every month, we’re extending our holiday discount and diving deeper into a new grape every month. For every purchase of six bottles or more, enjoy a 10% discount to help you meet the 12-month Turkish Wine Challenge!
In our month-by-month tasting plan, March is dedicated to one of Turkey’s emerging grapes: Patkara.
Meet Patkara
Patkara (paht-kar-ah) has only recently begun to emerge from its reputation as a little-known regional grape. Unlike many of Turkey’s better-known native varieties, it has not spread beyond its home in the Mediterranean district of Mersin.
Today, Mersin is better known for its large port and beaches than for its wines. Yet this low-lying coastal district, with its subtropical Mediterranean climate, has a long winemaking history. Old stone wine presses, along with grape and wine motifs carved into rock tombs, testify to centuries of viticulture here, possibly even involving Patkara.
At first glance, a beach town may seem an unlikely place for vineyards. In reality, Mersin’s vines are not found in the city itself but high in the Taurus Mountains, at elevations between 2,950 and 4,600 feet, in the small villages of Çömelek and Karacaoğlan. Here, vineyards benefit from a distinctive microclimate shaped by cooling breezes from the Mediterranean and cold air descending from the mountains.
The bedrock of the Taurus Mountains is made up of limestone studded with marine fossils, which in many areas has weathered into karstic landscapes. Sandy top soils strike a balance between drainage and water retention, making dry farming possible. The climate is dry and marked by wide diurnal temperature swings. In these conditions, old bush vines, some 80 years old or more, are often own-rooted, with the combination of sandy soils and elevation providing natural protection against phylloxera.
The Suddenly Black Grape
Many Turkish black grapes are named “something Karası,” which simply means “the black of” a particular place - kara being one of the Turkish words for black. Patkara breaks that pattern. Its name doesn’t point to where it’s grown, but to how it behaves. “Patkara” means “suddenly black,” a nod to how quickly the thin-skinned grapes ripen, turning a deep blue-black color almost overnight. The grapes grow in loose, cylindrical clusters and are used locally for everything from fresh eating and raisins to winemaking.
Patkara’s Revival
Previously on the verge of extinction, Patkara has been revived thanks to the combined efforts of regional wineries, particularly Tasheli Winery. After some amateur experiments, the winery elicited the help of Umay Çeviker Yaban Kolektif co-founder and leading Turkish grape expert. That same year, Urla Şarapçılık partnered with the winery, using Tasheli's grapes for Urla's Discovery series, the first commercial Patkara wine before Tasheli began bottling its own.
Today, multiple wineries, both in and outside Mersin, work with Patkara, including: Tasheli, Selefkia, Heraki, and 7Bilgeler.
Patkara Wine Profile
March is still pretty cool, which has many of us wanting to keep red wine in our glasses…but maybe not a big, heavy, oaky red. That makes it a perfect month to try Patkara. It makes medium-bodied wines with round tannins and youthful fruit with more black fruit character than red, such as damson plum and mulberry, olive, and savory notes with an earthy undertone.
Savory enough to pair with corned beef on Saint Patrick’s Day, should you be so bold as to put down the beer that day! He was a Bishop after all, he drank wine!
A deep and complex wine benefiting from the refined quality of hand-picked old vines. Bursting with concentrated expressions of blackberry and black currant, layered with bright notes of ripe strawberry and cherry. Warm clove and fresh earth add depth as candy fruitiness surprises the palate. Well-integrated acidity and grippy tannins create a structured framework with potential to age beautifully.
Andrea Lemieux is an international wine expert with particular expertise in Turkish Wine. She is the author of The Essential Guide to Turkish Wine, the world's only comprehensive English language book on Turkish wine. She is also the author of The Quick and Dirty Guide to Greek Wine and the founder of The Quirky Cork blog which is dedicated largely to Turkish wine.
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