“The grape that made us fall for Turkish reds”

And why I’m a wine list nerd

If you’ve been following Truffles & Tannins on Instagram, you might have seen a couple of videos of me talking about wine lists. As a wine person and a text person, wine lists to me are both endlessly fascinating and often frustrating. But because I try to keep my social media a largely positive place, I tend to call out the good ones, not the bad. The wine list I encountered last Saturday night was so very good that I decided to write a whole article about it. Ta-dah!

esra (lower case theirs) is a new Turkish-inspired restaurant in the east of Amsterdam, not far from where I live. They serve a fixed chef’s menu, which I guess makes it easier to come up with a wine list that’s likely to pair well with the food (that’s already a plus because, as a customer, you don’t need to worry about going too far wrong on the pairing front). The wine list is also not excessively long – rather, it’s a curated selection of eight whites, ten reds and a handful of sparkling and orange wines. I like that too, because I don’t want to spend hours flipping through page after page of wines.

As you might expect, for each wine the list features a country (in this case, Turkey, Georgia or nearly Mediterranean countries), a grape or several (some of which I’d never heard of), the vintage, the producer and the region. So far pretty standard stuff, although I’m always amazed at how many restaurants don’t even get these basics down on paper. But then it gets interesting:

esra’s red wines

You see the little symbols next to each of the bottles on the red wine list above? There’s a key on the front page to help you decode all these: a leaf means organic while a globe means biodynamic. A curly C means classic style while a squiggly line means a walk on the wild side (I’d imagine these wines might veer into more natural territory but I’m not sure). And finally, a star denotes their desert island wines – presumably the house favourites. As the person who is always ordering the wine for the table, trying to take different people’s preferences into account, this was IMMENSELY HELPFUL.

And then my favourite part: the little one-line descriptions. They’re not bombarding you with lengthy lists of obscure fruits or strange wine-speak. They’re not even telling you what you have to pair them with. They’re just giving you… a feeling. But it’s a feeling that tells you something about the experience you can expect, while leaving the particulars open to curiosity. Also: these one-liners were very much were not written by ChatGPT. Which, in January 2025, is a relief.

By this point, you might be wondering what I actually ordered. We started with a Croatian white from Istria made from Malvasia and something called Mavazija Istarka, which (according to the internet) is one of the oldest native grapes in Croatia. The description said “old vine, fresh wine” and it had a curly C next to it. Yup, spot on. Classic white, fresh and fruity and aromatic, but with an intensity of flavour that had us all coming back for more (and of course ordering another bottle).

The white and red we eventually ordered

Later in the evening, we switched to the second Turkish red that you can see on the list above: Karasakiz grapes, also old vine (I like my vines the opposite of how I like my men, it seems) and, according to esra, “the grape that made us fall for Turkish reds”. I can see why: there were all the juicy cranberries you might expect from a light red, but with surprising top notes of gasoline, wild herbs, eucalyptus maybe… If I hadn’t been in company I’d have spent a little longer identifying exactly what I was tasting and writing it down. As it was, I just felt generally delighted – and a bit smug that everyone loved the wines I’d ordered.

So what is there to conclude from all this? Of course, a well-curated wine list full of top-quality wines that work well with the style of food is half the battle won. And yes, you can always ask the staff for their wine recommendations and, in esra’s case, I have no doubt their advice would’ve been both helpful and accurate.

But those feelings that I had – surprise, delight, smug satisfaction – they all stemmed from the attention to detail that went into that wine list. In a city filled with thousands of restaurants, all competing for customers, that’s perhaps one of the reasons why esra is among the hottest tables in town right now. (Not to mention the reason why we kept ordering more wine!)

More info:

• If you’d like to know what we ate, read esra’s addition to my much-older-than-Substack website, Amsterdam Foodie: amsterdamfoodie.nl/amsterdam-food-guide/10-best-middle-eastern-restaurants-in-amsterdam

• If you’re a sommelier or restaurant manager who’s been inspired by my ravings about the strength of a good wine list, get in touch with me for non-AI powered text: trufflesandtannins.com/wine-list-services

• And if you just want to eat at esra because it sounds fab, reserve a table: esra.amsterdam