Ma’Adra Vineyard Visit

When we visited the olive grove for the second time in the morning, we went to Ma’Adra Vineyards on the hills of Madra mountains for lunch. The road was winding and rough, the weather a bit foggy, but traveling as a two-car convoy we made it to the vineyards high up on the mountains. The brand name they took is a contraction of two immortals from the mythology. The mother god Ma and her husband Madra were brought together in eternal love once more in Ma’Adra.

The first stop was the winery where Didem was our guide. She is the daughter of the owner Mr. Fikret Ozdemir and the oenologist of the vineyard. She studied oenology in England before they embarked on this venture with her father. The location was selected, soil and climate studies were done, the hills terraced and then planted. The winemaking process they use is very precise and controlled to the extent that grapes from every numbered parcel are put in the same vats every time. Then it moved down to the processing and aging area with the same kind of precision.

From the winery, we drove to the top of the hill to have lunch and sample their wine. The restaurant was overlooking the rolling hills that were vailed by the fog but the nearby vineyard terraces were visible. The owner Fikret is an architect by profession and his hand was visible in the design of the facility, down to the cobblestones on the ground of the outside sitting area.

I enjoyed samples of cheese, other charcuterie, and a glass of Pinot Noir. I found the pinot had a little more tannin than the ones I was familiar with back in the states and asked Didem about it. She said it was the soil that produced more tannin and that was in the character of the wine. However, a day later at Ayna Restaurant I had a couple of glasses from the same wine they served there and it did not have too much tannin at all. Maybe they served me the wrong wine by mistake back at Ma’Adra at lunch. But they were all pleasant after all.

After lunch and looking over the terraces of wine from the outside landing and taking more photographs, we bid our farewells to Ma’Adra and drove back home.

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