For this week’s CB Book Club installment, we caught up with Andrea Lemieux, author of The Essential Guide to Turkish Wine: An exploration of one of the oldest and most unexpected wine countries (Canoe Tree Press, 2021). In this exhaustive nearly 300-page guide, Lemieux, a WSET Level 2-certified wine expert and blogger behind The Quirky Cork, traces the history of Turkey’s wine tradition, and offers insight on grapes, wineries and where to enjoy Turkish wine in Istanbul. For those planning a trip, the book is as practical as it is informative, with maps, addresses and contacts for wineries and venues throughout the country.

It was a cool, balmy evening in the center of Istanbul’s Şişli district, and summer was on the verge of slipping into fall. If you were sitting down outside, you could enjoy the calm, gentle breeze, but you’d break out in sweat the minute you started walking, thanks to the thick layer of humidity. We opened a bottle of shiraz on a small back patio where a smattering of trees and bushes offered respite from the dense, urban maze and the skyscrapers that dominated its horizon just a stone’s throw away. This 2015 shiraz was bottled in the northwest province of Tekirdağ in Thrace, one of Turkey’s top wine regions. At 50 TL a bottle, we expected a competent, drinkable red, only to be blown away at first sip by the wine’s lively personality.