A spectacular Turkish red

2014 Kayra, Kalecik Karasi Red, Turkey (£12.39, Strictly Wine, 01235-364536, StrictlyWine.co.uk; £12.42, Great Wines Direct, 01293-734664, GreatWinesDirect.co.uk).

The finest food we tasted was found in cafs and markets. In the smarty-pants restaurants the wines were almost always awful and the food was fussy, over-thought and lacked integrity. We will try again, of course, because we love everything else about this great city, but I wanted to at least find a few noteworthy wines and a failsafe restaurant which delivered the classics in style.

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Disgruntled, I have kept my eyes peeled for fleeting sightings of Turkish wines in the UK and I have, at last, found a stunner. Source your finest kebabs, dners, kftes and mantis from your best local Turkish deli and open this spectacular red. Strangely, it's made by a Californian winemaker in what he describes as a "Beaujolais-style", but this amazing wine is finer than anything I tasted in Istanbul by a very wide margin.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006.

He has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.