Doluca actually tasted nice
The cheap Doluca from that era was foul, really bad, and the associated hangovers were a thing of legend in Istanbul. We were convinced that it was actually fermented grape must, with a bit of colouring and some industrial alcohol added to bring it up to strength.
Round about 2004, for the old EiT forum, we'd organised a boat trip up the Boz for two hundred ex pats and Turks - it was an all inclusive bash, local beer, wine and raki were included along with an extensive meze.
A couple of us met up with the guy from the boat to taste wines, choose dishes and work out final per head price. We settled on the food and tried a few cheaper wines but decided on a fairly decent Kavak red and a Çankaya white. All very professional so far, and we ended up with a decent price that allowed for a reasonable profit to cover server costs etc for the next few months.
We should have known better!
Come the night there were problems with the boat (spare part having to be taxied from somewhere in Asia), problems with the food (they didn't realise how much Europeans & Americans ate when it was included) and the biggest issue... they very quickly ran out of the chosen wines and had to restock with... yep, Duluca Klasik or whatever it was called in those days.
Folks didn't seem to mind that two hours after departure time we were still in Arnavutköy, they didn't seem to mind that it took ages for food to come up from the galley, but jeez, the grief we got over the fact the wine was sh1t. Fortunately, most of these folks were on big dollar or sterling contracts and it was no biggie to hit the pay bar which had lots of imported spirits.
By eleven o'clock they'd drank the pay bar dry, there was no ice or mixers left so the hard core drinkers then started back on the free stuff until disembarkation at about one in the morning.
We'd never seen the forum so quiet the following day. Two, three and four day hangovers were being reported across the city.
Fortunately, boats have lots of cubby holes so our stash of the good stuff lasted all night
JF