Protecting Turkey’s Old Vines by Umay Çeviker
Umay Çeviker on his ‘stealth’ project to save Turkey’s native old vine heritage
A Paradox
Producing less wine than Canada, Turkey does not qualify as a prominent wine producer. On the other hand, Turkey has the world’s fifth largest vineyard area: 6% of all the vineyards on earth are planted here.
Among wine producing countries, Turkey tops the charts for vineyard area that has been lost: 54 thousand hectares of vineyards since 2014 (1) For context, Turkey has pulled up in seven years the equivalent of the total vineyard area of Georgia, or almost twice the vineyard area of New Zealand.
It gets even more puzzling when the crop of these vineyards is considered. Turkey is the world’s 6th largest grape producer, harvesting more grapes than Argentina and Chile combined (2). Yet with less than a mere 3% used for winemaking, Turkey produces just a fraction of the wine of the above mentioned countries.
Nature, nurture and humans
There is one simple answer to this paradox: the human factor.
During the 600-year tenure of the Ottoman Empire, the production and consumption of wine was forbidden to the muslim community. The governments allowed non-muslim people to produce and consume wine not only to reconcile with a large part of the population but also to keep the lucrative revenues. During the late 19th century, when European vineyards were devastated by phylloxera, Ottoman ports of the Aegean and the Black Sea were busy exporting wine that outnumbers the total production of wine today.
In the aftermath of the 1st World War and the Turkish War of Independence, the forced migration of the Armenian and Greek settlers, responsible for most of the wine production and its trade, left the whole scene abandoned. This not only meant that vast areas of vines were left unattended but hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge and tradition were lost, almost overnight.
That seems to be the milestone for the history of Turkish wine, as the country has since been searching for its lost heritage. This is despite all the constructive efforts to revive winemaking during the early years of the modern republic through research guided by foreign consultants.
Some of the early established wineries were acquisitions from the Greek people. Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the young republic, established the first state-run winery in 1925 to bring wine production into action once again. Doluca in the Thrace and Kavaklıdere in Ankara spearheaded as private enterprises very soon. Competitive threat from the state monopoly Tekel and some regional growers made both companies and the overall industry focus on marketing and sales rather than quality and diversity, well into the last decade of the last century.
During the 1990’s, the early boutique wineries in Thrace entered the scene with their own vineyards planted with international varieties. They labelled their ‘chateau style’ wines as varietals to bring in a quality driven approach. Their immediate success acted as a milestone for many new producers established during the early 2000’s, encouraging them to follow the same route up until today.
Turkey has an ever diminishing local wine market where per capita consumption remains below one liter. This, and the impact of the politically turbulent last decade on inbound tourism, gave rise to the search for new markets. The resulting efforts to promote Turkish wine in the targeted markets through tasting events and competitions swiftly revealed the fact that Turkey should rather focus on its own grape varieties and wine styles to find its unique place in western markets.
This is why it is time for Turkey to head towards its wealth of vineyards and own varieities. And it is a perfect opportunity to reveal the potential of the old vineyards that have managed to survive until today.
Making wine to make a difference
Old vines are beautiful photogenic creatures. The sight of these spectacular vineyards when joined by the stories behind them are often so moving that you begin to see them not merely as plants but rather as men of wisdom who have been around longer than you can imagine.
Left to right: Field blend of old local vines near the volcano Mount Hasan, close to Güzelyurt, Aksaray in Cappadocia
Hatun Parmağı (white) vines at Xalto vineyards in İslahiye near Gaziantep
Nonetheless, the Turkish way calls for action, not sentiment. You have to be practical and clear the way. That is exactly what the Geoffrey Roberts Award I won in 2015 did as the deus ex machina moment for action. The award gives a grant to “a candidate who has a proven track record of successfully furthering the cause of wines from emerging regions and who proposes to use the bursary to do something practical in the promotion and development of such wines”. It was the perfect force to make a beginning.
I used the grant to establish a model by which two little-known areas and three local grapes are introduced to a participating winery. The grapes we used were known for high-quality wine in the past, but had not used for commercial winemaking for a century. There were sufficient grapes to make 1500 bottles from each variety. The rare harvest was transported in refrigerated trucks to be made, with minimal intervention, by an acclaimed winemaker.
In 2017 Urla Şarapçılık in the coastal Aegean region took on the preliminary attempt, establishing the ‘Discover’ label. The wines were made from old-vine Patkara (red) and Gök (white) which had been grown as as a field blend at the foothills of the Taurus Mountains (inner Mediterranean region). We also made a white wine from old-vine Sungurlu (white), grown at a high-altitude plateau in Central Anatolia.
Left to right: Old Patkara vines at 1.200m altitude in Karacaoğlan near Mut, province of Mersin
Ancient press carved into rock at the Karacaoğlan vineyards
Discover label by Urla Şarapçılık featuring old vine Sungurlu, Patkara and Gök
The resulting wines quickly sold within the Urla winery. (A major tourist destination, the beautiful site is visited by more than 75.000 people a year.) The story was well told, and appeciated. As a social enterprise, the revenue from sales was retained to purchase the grapes of the next vintage and to sustain the model.
More old vine wine
Aiming to spread the word as much as possible the project went on collaborating with other wineries in the following vintages. In 2019 we sourced old vine Gamay from Thrace to collaborate with Asmadan Winery in Gallipoli, a newcomer to the wine scene in its own right. We also worked with the Patkara grape using indigenous yeasts. For the 2020 vintage we found ourselves a home at the Vinolus Winery in Kayseri, Cappadocia to make three different renditions of the Sungurlu grape; a dry version, a pet-nat and a straw wine.
We have limited resources at these wineries that we literally infiltrate. We have to act within the allowed production limits, the fermention tank capacities and stay within the allocated time of the resident winemakers and consultants. In respect, we have to keep the diversity and the volume as little as possible. On the other hand this limits the feedback we need to receive to get to know these varieties and vineyards better each year. That is the reason why we initiated a collaboration with a talented group of home winemakers called Hypatia in 2021. We will send these members same grapes so that we can make multiple trials and receive diverse feedback. Then we will be holding a tasting in the next spring to compare the end results.
Luckily, there are several attempts by established wineries to treasure the harvest of old vines, and to prevent the disappearance of precious old-vine grapes in homogenous blends. Thanks to its tireless founder Seyit Karagözoğlu, Paşaeli Winery has contributed to the scene by introducing the white varieties Kolorko, Yapıncak and Sıdalan, as well as the pink skinned Çakal, all coming from old vineyards located in the southern Thrace and Kaz Mountains. Udo Hirsch and his Gelveri Manufactur has long been making natural wines in clay amphoras using indigenous grapes of old vines sourced from small parcels of well kept vineyards at the foothills of the volcanic Hasan Mountain in Cappadocia.
Kayra Winery, that took over the old state monopoly Tekel’s wine operation back in 2005 to turn it into one of Turkey’s most innovative wine brands, has just released an old vine Semillon coming from the Thrace. Chamlija Winery in Kırklareli, better known for its impressive Bordeaux blends, has surprised wine lovers this year with a new set of whites made from two white varieties coming from centenary vines grown in the unlikely province of Burdur at the inner reaches of the Mediterranean.
It is heartbreaking to know that every part of Anatolia was once covered with extensive vineyards and that most are now lost. Part of them was kept as they provided some sort of economic return either as table grapes or for use in molasses production, a good replacement for sugar in hard times. A few Alevi and Syriac villages persevered with winemaking for their own consumption and have sustained growing wine grapes uninterruptedly. No matter what the reason why these vineyards survived we can not afford losing a single old vine anymore if we want to save our heritage and our identity.
Ankara, 6th of May, 2021
(1), (2) OIV-2019-Statistical-Report-on-World-Vitiviniculture
