The first encounter with Bogazkere is remarkable. You've heard about its powerful tannins, its toughness and its obscure origins but nothing can prepare you for the taste of the grapes.Wine grapes are usually good to eat, if you don't mind the seeds, because they are full of flavour and they taste like the wine they will become. Yes, Bogazkere does too but the tannins....by jingo, they pull you up short. The mouth-puckering tannins don't encourage another sample. Luckily, these tannins are malleable in the winery and while good Bogazkere should always have a definite tannic structure, there is ample fruit to compensate.It's a late ripener, requiring plenty of heat through late summer and early autumn. The best examples come from the Diyarbakir region of south-eastern Anatolia. It's being planted in the Denizli region but so far results are less promising here. Maybe it's vine age, maybe it's trellis design--the traditional method in Diyrbakir is bush vines, sprawling on the ground.