Tag: Wine making

Turkish Wine Renaissance Promotes Rock-Aged Whites

Lucien Arkas, chairman of Arkas Holding A.S., discusses his LA Wines property at Swissotel Grand Efes in Izmir. Arkas bought out his partners in 2010, renaming it LA Wines. Its vineyards are now certified organic. Photographer: Elin McCoy/Bloomberg via Bloomberg

At a tasting in a World War II cement bunker in Gali winery’s vineyards on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula, the 2010 bright, juicy cabernet franc-merlot blend is a big and very pleasant surprise.

One of several dozen small boutique wineries founded in the last few years, Gali is part of the country’s growing wine renaissance. It was the first stop on recent tasting tour that left me highly enthusiastic about Turkey’s wine potential.

After tramping through Gali’s vineyards, with windy views of the blue Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara, I savor the delicious red again on owner Hakan Kavur’s stone terrace with oregano-accented lamb slow-braised in local olive oil.

When it comes to wine, you’re never far from history in this country of more than 800 grape varieties. Though many new vintners in Turkey’s seven wine regions champion international ones like chardonnay and cabernet, I discover the best wines so far come from a handful of Turkish grapes with hard-to-pronounce names like okuzgozu (oh-cooz-goe-zoo) and kalecik karasi (kah- le-djic-car-ah-ser).

Indiana Jones

The centerpiece of my 10-day trip is the EWBC Digital Wine Communications Conference in Izmir on the Aegean. One of the main speakers, Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum — who is called the Indiana Jones of wine archeology — makes the case for Turkey as wine’s birthplace.

His presentation covers the country’s several thousand years of flourishing drinking culture under the Hittites, Assyrians, Lydians and Byzantine Christians.

Despite that history, Turkey’s 100-plus wineries face serious challenges in a land with a 99 percent Muslim population. The government discourages consumption through high taxes and advertisement bans, and this year prohibited internet sales.

None of that stopped Izmir native Lucien Arkas, chairman of Arkas Holding A.S., owner of 55 companies, and a major art collector, from investing in a 1,168-acre property 45 minutes southeast of Izmir.

As we talk over small glasses of Turkish tea in between the conference’s panels and tastings, Arkas, 67, smiles and shrugs, “People still smoke and drink. Twenty million tourists want to go to the beach, and sip wine.”

LA Wines

The genial, round-faced Arkas, in a dark blue Zegna suit, says he purchased a small share in the 2005 project sight unseen, but bought out his partners in 2010. Now the vineyards are certified organic, and he renamed the winery LA Wines.

I like LA’s pure-tasting 2010 Mon Reve chardonnay/chenin blanc ($16), with its hint of pears and tropical fruit, and the earthy 2010 Mon Reve Tempranillo. I sip them at the Arkas museum in Izmir, while studying Turkish photographer Ahmet Ertug’s stunning pictures of European opera houses and libraries.

Like Kavur, Arkas is wedded to European grape varieties rather than his country’s own.

Happily, both avoid the excessive-oak-aging embraced by many of Turkey’s small estate wineries. Case in point: The Gulor winery founded in 1993 by Guler Sabanci, the chairman of her family’s Sabanci Holding (SAHOL), the second largest company in Turkey, and the first to plant international grapes. Gulor makes a clean, fresh 2012 G Sauvignon Blanc ($11), but its pricier reds taste more of wood than fruit.

Local Grapes

Some of the biggest (and oldest) wineries are now refocusing on indigenous grapes. Doluca dates from 1926, and at its huge new modern cellar hidden away in a vast gray industrial park a 90-minute drive from Istanbul, its French winemaker Pascal Lenzi pours barrel samples of a crisp, lemony white 2012 Narince (nah-rin-djeh) and a lively easy-drinking 2012 Kalecik Karasi, the Turkish answer to gamay, the grape of Beaujolais.

But a few days later, on the high desert plateau of Cappadocia in central Anatolia, I find the most exciting wines of my stay at the traditional Kocabag winery outside Uchisar. The spare, windswept expanse of landscape, where herds of wild horses once roamed and patches of grapevines sprawl like low bushes as they did thousands of years ago, seems vast and timeless.

“My grandfather started in 1972 in a simple cave carved from rock,” explains third generation Mehmet Erdogan, as he leads the way into the winery. The stone arches and fermenting and aging vats are all carved from soft, easy-to-work tuff rock made of compressed volcanic ash.

Lamb Kebab

At a wine bar and shop overlooking the strange rock formations in Uchisar’s Pigeon Valley, Erdogan pours Kocabag’s two whites and three reds.

My white pick is tart, appley 2011 Narince, with its floral aromas and wet stone taste. Among reds, the stars are 2011 Kapadokya ($14), a complex earth-and-black-cherry blend of bogazkere and okuzgozu and the subtle, soft cassis and fruit 2010 Okuzgozu ($16), which is perfect with lamb shish kebab. I had to have a second glass.

(Elin McCoy writes on wine and spirits for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

Muse highlights include Jeremy Gerard on theater and Martin Gayford on art.

December 7, 2012
Old city lends new meaning to ‘supermarket wine.’

ISTANBUL, Turkey. Some cities are wrapped in fog or smog; Istanbul is swaddled with antiquity and exoticism. No doubt when the emperor Constantine established this city as a purpose-built Imperial capital in the fourth century of the common era he did so with the idea that it would remain eternally youthful and relevant – such is the classical dream. From that time until the present, through good times and bad, the city has been the very model of a worldly, cosmopolitan, if not always modern, metropolis, as fortuitously situated as a city could well be to both administer a far-flung empire and control lucrative trade routes.

A city built for the ages that believes no new age has anything to teach it will shortly be a hive of anachronism and incongruity – aspects we encounter everywhere here, though nowhere more poignantly than on the rooftop of our hotel where we retire at the end of the day to sip Cappadocian chardonnay. Before us, tanker and cargo ships queue up in the Sea of Marmara in preparation for their passage through the narrow, snaky Bosphorus to the open waters of the Black Sea; behind, flocks of birds whirl around the domes of Ayasofiya and the Blue Mosque. In the deepening dusk calls to prayer issue from their minarets. The singing has a surprising, lusty virtuosity. It’s not at all like the calls to prayer we heard in Marrakesh, which seem amateurish in comparison. Perhaps an outpost like Morocco just doesn’t attract the vocal talent of an Istanbul.

Our La Scala-quality muezzins strike-up at the moment one can no longer tell a black thread from a white one with the naked eye – or so we are told – but we note that in our hotel this tends to coincide with the moment rooftop barkeep Hassan puts the needle down on a Diana Krall rendition of some Cole Porter tune. For a few minutes sacred and secular vocalists duel ineffectually. Then the muezzins give it up, while Krall swings on. It’s clearly no longer a question of the barbarians being at the gate. They’ve bought condos and registered the kids for school.

We experience another moment of expectation dissonance when we beg our driver (a Turkish-born computer science PhD who lived for a while in Brookline, Massachusetts; the friend of a friend), to take us to an upscale mall so we can get a taste of how affluent Istanbullers shop. The place is a knock-out — classier and more tasteful than anything we know in Boston. We take the elevator up from seven floors of underground parking into a retail wonderland the architect has designed it to be self-cooling.

The Apple Store is thick with shoppers – perhaps related to the death of Steve Jobs which we learned of during a layover at the Munich airport days before. As for the clientele, there’s no shortage of jeggings and decolletage on display, though tattoos are very rare.

We step into a supermarket that is so beautifully lit and organized it would (or should) make Whole Foods blush. Momentarily transfixed before a Krispy Kreme kiosk, we wander off in search of the wine department – if there is one. There is, and it’s extensive with a majority of Turkish offerings and a fair selection of European wines familiar to us. I spot, for example, a red and a white from old favorite Vaucluse producer Chateau Valcombe. But the real surprises are in a special upright cooler case where we spy what you see in the photo above: a 2004 Gaja DOC Langhe wine priced at 1010 turkish lira – around $550 – and 2001 La Mission Haut Brion at 1189TL (around $650).

A young security guard who saw me take out my camera rushed over to tell me photos were forbidden, but we won on appeal when the young GM with the moussed up hair came by and said it was no problem.

When we complimented him on his beautiful market he shrugged.”Next week we close and take everything out of here,” he says.” “After that, everything new.”

via Old city lends new meaning to ‘supermarket wine.’ – Boston.com.

October 15, 2011
Ancient Winemaking Makes Resurgence in Southeast Turkey

Southeast Turkey is home to one of the oldest Christian civilizations in the world – the Assyrians who were among the first to convert to Christianity. Among their ancient traditions is making wine, in a way that has changed little since the time of the Roman Empire. But the region they live in is at the center of a bloody conflict between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state, and most fled the region to Europe and the U.S. But in the town of Midyat in southeast Turkey a few people are keeping the winemaking tradition alive.

A winery dating back to the third century,carved into a cave in Urgup in central Anatolia, Turkey (File Photo)

Tradition

Assyrian Christian Yusuk Uluisik is crushing grapes by hand – a ritual that has not changed for centuries.

“From our fathers and grandfathers, all the way back to the time of the Jesus, we are making wine in the same way. My family has been making wine here and drinking it for centuries,” he explained. “Every year they produce two to three small barrels and put them indoors until they are ready. Then we drink two to three glasses with oily food.”

Gradually the juice of the grapes pours out of the bottom of a stone pot and trickles down a stone trench where it is collected and then stored in large plastic containers to ferment.

Once he was one of hundreds of families making wine but now he is just one of a few left. Most departed to escape fighting between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state during the 1980’s and 90’s.

“In the past there was little demand, he noted. “Maybe a few bottles at Christmas, to a few Christian families that were left. As everyone else had gone abroad to escape the fighting and for a better life. But in the last five years there has been some kind of revival. There are many tourists visiting and we can’t produce enough to meet the demand.”

More tourists

The growing number of tourists visiting this ancient part of Turkey is a testament to the return of peace and growing prosperity.

“Assyrians used to live here. They used to make their prayers everything. As you can see the windows look to east,” said Kaya Gulersan, the manager of a boutique hotel. “In the belief of Assyrians, the day of reincarnation, Jesus Christ rises from the east. And that’s why in a cemetery of the Assyrians they, have been buried sitting down not lying, therefore waiting for the day to come to greet Jesus.”

The luxurious hotel opened a year ago. It is has been renovated into a grand Assyrian-style building, a reminder of past prosperity of Assyrian Christians which once made more up than 80 percent of the town’s population.

Drinking a glass of locally-produced wine with Gulersan he explains the opportunity to discover one of Christianity’s oldest communities is drawing people from around world and providing a small boom for wine makers like Yusuf.

“They come here to see the churches,” he explained. “There is one here called Mor Gabria which is 1,600 years old. A few weeks ago I had 60 orthodox Greeks who feasted her. Next week some Italians. We have visitors from all nations. About two weeks we had a family, [the father] he left 25 to 26 years ago. He brought his family. He showed his children where he was born. They are returning more and more and there is a village here. Assyrian origin Swiss citizens, they are are building their own town here.”

The town Gulersan is referring to is Kafkoy, about 40 kilometers away from Midyat .

Back to motherland

Kafkoy is a hive of activity. Abandoned in the 1990’s by its inhabitants at the height of the conflict between the state and the PKK, it still shows the scars of that conflict. But five years ago, a few Assyrian families returned from Switzerland to bring the town back to life.

Yakup Demir was one of the first to come back.

“It was always in our mind to return back. We are people of this land. We are the oldest people of this land,” he said. “We have been here almost 5,000 years. This is our land our motherland we belong here he said. But, he says, the situation here didn’t allow us to stay here or even visit. But the world is changing, Turkey is changing and even people around here are changing so we decided to return.

Warm memories

Walking around newly built houses of the growing community Demir explains memories of wine making remain strong along with plans to bring back the tradition.

He says you can see, all around are grape vines, they are all overgrown now, but this region is famous for the quality of grapes. He said he can remember as a child here making wine, the whole village would come together to make wine every year. He says we even made spirits with the grape seeds. But now we are planning to build a proper vineyard.

As we walk through the village, we come across two Assyrian Christian visitors from Europe. They are arguing about whether it is the right time to move back.

Although the region here is at peace, fears remain of a return to a full scale conflict between the Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state as peace efforts falter. But, Demir says he is an optimist, proudly pointing to their rebuilt village, as his vindication, adding that he hopes in the near future this region will be famous more for its wine than conflict.

via VOA | Ancient Winemaking Makes Resurgence in Southeast Turkey | News | English.

November 12, 2010