Turkey’s Wine Renaissance: Exploring Rich Traditions and New Horizons

Insights into Turkey's wine heritage and innovative projects.

Turkey's wine industry is experiencing a remarkable renaissance, blending ancient traditions with modern innovations. Home to a diverse range of native grape varieties, Turkey’s viticultural landscape is as rich and varied as its history. In this interview, G?zdem Gürbüzatik, a passionate advocate for Turkish wines, discusses the country's wine heritage journey, the challenges faced, and the innovative projects aimed at preserving and promoting Turkey’s unique grapes. From the Anatolian Grapes Project to the broader efforts of Wines of Turkey, G?zdem shares her insights into the past, present, and future of Turkish winemaking.

Turkey is home to hundreds of native grape varieties, many of which are not widely known outside the country. Can you share the journey and challenges of the 'Anatolian Grapes Project' in preserving and promoting these indigenous vines? What has been the most surprising discovery during this project?

Turkey’s geography lies around the birthplace of grape domestication and winemaking. Vineyards are like a web of cultural continuity. You will find all around the massive land of old vineyards, from an altitude of sea level up to 1770m high. It is an incredible biodiversity and the tradition of grapes and vines has always been culturally intertwined no matter what the political dominance is. From the Hittites to the Romans and Byzantines then the Ottomans the viticulture was always there.?

In order to understand why we are now experiencing a sort of new renaissance of winemaking biodiversity here is a brief historical background:?

Vinification and winemaking had an interruption at the beginning of the 20th century due to complicated layers of changes and turmoil. Population exchange, change of governance, phylloxera, and wars created a loss of cultural memory of this tradition. However, the initiation of state monopoly up until the 2000s brought wine production as an economic development project back to the land. Starting with 2004, after privatization we saw an increasing interest in winemaking. There are currently around 200 wineries in Turkey. During the state monopoly period, the government started projects to collect the inventory of vines and grapes throughout Turkey. To protect them, they created a collection vineyard in Tekirda?, Thrace. There are 1439 grape varieties registered here and 1150 varieties for which genetic studies have been carried out. ?854 of them were found to be genetically different. This indicates a very high diversity on a world scale. It is important to keep records, but knowing the potential of these grapes, their genetic ties with each other, and their connections with grapes around the world is a major research topic.

Vinification of indigenous grapes was not more than 10 varieties up until 10 years ago. Most of the grapes that were used were blended and used as no-names. Nowadays, there is a great interest from new wineries to go around their local terroir and find out these unique grape varieties most of the time ungrafted or old vines at unique terroirs.

Currently, 68 indigenous grape varieties have been uniquely vinified and it is a great richness and interest for not only Turkish wine enthusiasts but the international wine community as well. There are projects to raise awareness for these micro-terroirs that need to be protected. For instance, Heritage Vines of Turkey is working on micro-terroir and unique old vineyard sites to raise awareness. ?I take part in this initiative with 3 other friends; Umay ?eviker, Levon Ba???, and Sabiha Apayd?n G?nenli.

Under the title “Precarious Existence of Anatolia’s Old Vineyards,” we presented our work with the support of The Old Vine Conference and The IWSC, mapping the inventory of Karasak?z vineyards in ?anakkale Bayrami? and inviting wine producers to the region to draw attention to this grape. Additionally, we had the opportunity to present our micro terroir inventory study of old vineyards in the villages of ??melek-Karacao?lan-Uzuncabur? in the Toros Mountains, supported by Slow Wine and the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, to a broader audience. Genomic Identity and Database Comparisons of Our Local Grapes. In another session moderated by Umay ?eviker, Ankara University Faculty of Agriculture Department of Horticulture Faculty Member Viniculturist Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hande Tahmaz Karaman announced that with the initiative of “Heritage Vines of Türkiye” and in collaboration with Montpellier Grapevine Biological Resources Center (BRC), we are preparing to launch a comprehensive study aimed at investigating the genomic identity of Turkey’s ancient vines and local grape varieties.

Read full article on Wines of Turkey here.