Each year Wine Spectator assesses wine lists around the world and publishes its Restaurant Awards. In the Turkey section of the 31 August 2014 issue is Sans Restaurant: Hacı Adil Caddesi, Palmiye Sokak No. 1, Istanbul. Beside the entry is my photograph, and beneath it the line “Burçak Desombre, Wine Director”.
By the key at the foot of the page, Sans is listed at the Award of Excellence level. That is the entry tier, and its criterion runs: a list of at least seventy-five selections, chosen with care from quality producers, matching the restaurant’s cuisine in both price and character, and varied enough for a guest who cares about wine to find what they are after. The two tiers above it, Best of Award of Excellence and Grand Award, begin at three hundred and fifty and one thousand selections respectively.
Seventy-five bottles may sound modest, but the count is only part of the assessment. Wine Spectator also requires vintages, appellations and producer names to be right. You can tell when a list has been built by someone who knows the kitchen and the guest: not from the number of lines, but from the way the choices answer one another.
This credit was missing from the site for a long time, because it was a printed list with no online counterpart. I added it after reading the clipping and verifying the entry.