Turkey’s Old Vines: A Disappearing Delight | Wine-Searcher News & Features

Imagine you could see the wine world from space, and imagine that you could pick out individual vineyards – perhaps individual vine varieties. Portugal would have plenty; Italy would be a cacophony of difference. South West France and Savoie, border regions both, would be bewildering in their variety.

But now turn the globe to the Caucasus and Turkey. This is where the cultivation of the vine began. Logically, there should be more variety here than anywhere else.

And there is. Turkey’s Tekirdag Viticulture Research Institute alone contains 1435 varieties; genetic identification has been done on 1150 of them, and 854 have been found to be genetically different. (To rest your eyes, you might want to look at the Napa Valley for a few moments. Sameness can be soothing.)

But now zoom in closer to Turkey. Something is happening: vineyards are disappearing. In the last 40 years, Turkey has lost half its vineyard area. Zoom in again, to the Bayramiç region, and you find them disappearing even faster.

Bayramiç is in northwest Turkey, one of 11 districts that comprise the province of Çanakkale. Çanakkale is on the shore of the Dardanelles, just opposite the Gallipoli Peninsula; Troy was in Çanakkale. This is not one of the world’s remote corners. For parts of history, it has been right at the centre of the world.

It has made wine for longer than anyone can say for certain. But of course, the current Turkish government does not favour wine. A lot of growers have given up and changed to apples and nectarines instead, encouraged by the building of two irrigation dams by the government, and by the fact that apples and nectarines will fetch two or three times the price of grapes. Most vineyards are less than a hectare, and their owners are always old. Travel anywhere there and you’ll see piles of uprooted vines.

So this is a good place to see a snapshot of just what the world is losing of its vine heritage. It’s a relatively recent process, because while under the Ottoman Empire wine was prohibited, Greeks and Armenians were allowed to produce it, and did. But genocide and deportation in the early decades of the 20th Century destroyed that culture. Vineyards were abandoned and a tradition lost, and the efforts of Kemel Ataturk to promote winemaking didn’t help very much in sustaining these tiny holdings. Phylloxera arrived in about 1930. And any new producers in the late 20th Century were seduced by the siren call of international varieties. The average age of vines in Bayramiç is 26 years, and few are over 50. Çanakkale has more of those 854 genetically different vines than anywhere else; and it’s losing vineyards faster than anywhere else.

So what is there? A lot of table grapes, of course. Only three percent of Turkish grapes are used for wine. The rest are for raisins, for table grapes or for molasses, vinegar and raki. The Karasakiz grape, pale red and prolific, became the most widely planted variety in the late 20th Century, encouraged by the establishment of the Çanakkale Brandy and Wine Factory in 1957; this was closed in 2007, and more and more growers turned to apples and nectarines.

And yet some reasonably old vineyards survive. Enough to attract the attention of the Old Vine Conference, a non-profit organisation started a couple of years ago to raise awareness of old vines across the world. It worked with Heritage Vines of Turkey to research these vines, especially Karasakiz, and HVoT got six wineries on board to make wines from Karasakiz – because it was hardly being used for wine. Nobody really knew what would happen.

The six wineries are Pasaeli, with a long-standing interest in local varieties and old vines; Suvla, one of Turkey’s large-scale producers; Yaban Kolektif, set up by Umay Çeviker and Levon Bagis, a co-founder of HvoT; their winemaker, José Hernandez-Gonzalez, also made some Karasakiz under his own label, Heraki. Chamlija Winery, a maker of Bordeaux blends in northern Thrace, wanted to join in, and new producer 7 Bilgeler, another supporter of old vines and local varieties, is the sixth. And all have decided to continue making Karasakiz in the future; it clearly makes wines with great appeal.

They showed the wines at a tasting in London, along with wines from even more obscure local varieties. And the flavours! Tasters were scratching around for descriptors: “what is this taste? It’s unfamiliar; I can’t put my finger on it”. The wines were fascinating in their variety, their originality.

All were balanced and fresh. Acidity was good, even high: these varieties have a lot to offer a warming world. Alcohol was nicely tucked in; you couldn’t fault the winemaking. There was a bit of overoaking sometimes, but that is personal taste: sometimes the flavour of the grape was a little obscured by it, but not often.

The taste test

Let me give a few clues about flavours. Of the whites, Yapincak and Kinali Yapincak have notes of hay and fudge; Çakal is apricot and herbs and a touch of bitterness. Sidalan is nutty, sweet-sour; Osmanca grass and lemon. Beylerce has a firm core, grip and power; earth, salt and lemon zest. Sungurlu is tannic and powerful, lemony; Sultaniye, aka Sultana or Thompson Seedless, somewhat dull and toffeeish and best left as a table grape, on this showing. Hüyük Aküzüm is celery and apple, grippy, with good acidity; Ten Göynek is peaches, relatively conventional. Mazrona and Bilbizeki in an orange blend was hay and lavender honey; two Karkus orange wines were totally different, one strident, the other subtle dried fruit and bitter coffee. Kizil Üzüm was terrific, aromatic herbs and peaches. Osmanca made a very pretty sweetish wine with pithy lemon fruit and lowish acidity.

Of the reds, Karasakiz is of course the variety they want to focus on, because it’s the most planted: light red, fresh and with fair alcohol, 13.5-14 percent. It has fresh raspberry and bitter-cherry fruit, herbal, and with nice tension; it’s appetising and moreish. They’re right: it seems a great deal better than it has been given credit for.

“Kara” means black. Karasakiz means “black gum” – the gum in question being made from tree resin, and popular for chewing. Karaoglan was very good, brown-bready, deep and fresh; Kalecik Karasi (black from Kalecik) was savoury plums, anise and soot. Papazkarasi was raspberry and sloe, remarkably complex and aromatic – the name means “priest’s black”. Kanlikara means “bloody black”, in the sense of being mid-red in colour: it’s tea-flavoured and bright. Patkara means “sudden black” – it ripens fast, and tastes of tar and flowers. Karaoglanis black tea and earth, and Adakarasi means “island black of Avsa” and tastes a bit Greek, all black fruit and acidity.

What can one judge from sometimes a single example of a grape variety? Only that these grapes are worth keeping. Perhaps most of all, they are not in the dark coloured, muscular model that tends to go down best with wine-drinkers in Turkey (yes, wine-drinkers exist in Turkey; just not everywhere): they were perfect for markets which want lightness, concentration and character.

Zoom out again. The piles of uprooted vines are growing larger, and will continue to do so. We are losing vines before we know what we have. Sommeliers could help to save some; the sommeliers at the London tasting were enthusiastic, certain that their customers would be interested. But the irony is that in most countries producers will pounce with glee on any redisovered variety; here they lie in dead heaps by the roads.

But here too, pushing their way into the vineyards, are just a few researchers and winemakers, looking to see what they can save, and how.