Who would be a producer of Turkish wine?

It had been 15 years since I had last been to Turkey, or Türkiye as it is now officially known, to study its wines. Much had changed, for better and worse.

In 2009, the country was still feeling the effects of the Turkish wine renaissance of the 1990s. Boutique wineries were popping up everywhere, focusing primarily on Turkish versions of international grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay.

But President ErdoganThe Turkish regime has not been a friend of wine production. Today, there are strict controls on where and how wine can be sold. It is a crime for anyone to mention wine on social media. And since May this year, those who produce wine for sale, however small, are required by law to set aside millions of Turkish lira as collateral in anticipation of future taxes and fines.

The result is a culture of fear among the country’s 191 wine producers. Inspectors can appear at random and make demands that wine professionals find absurd. For example, it is illegal to trade in used barrels.

I visited a producer in Cappadocia whose name I will not reveal. Like all producers in the world, he makes his wine in clay jars, considered unhygienic by the local inspector. He now has to pretend that he makes his wine in a small stainless steel tank, which the inspector comes to check every month. Another Spanish winemaker had to be persuaded not to return to his home country after a particularly strict inspection.

Foreign visitors may also be affected. My fellow wine writers Oz Clarke and Caro Maurer were due to attend a major wine fair in Istanbul in May, but it was immediately cancelled when the organiser failed to secure permission for an event that would involve serving wine.

The Root Origin Soil conference I was invited to attend last month had been carefully designed so as not to offend the sympathies of the authorities. The only wine served was an individual tasting of a range of truly exciting wines made almost exclusively from indigenous grape varieties. It was organised for me by Ankara architect Umay Çeviker, a wine enthusiast and one of the four founders of Heritage Vines of Turkey, an organisation dedicated to keeping these promising vines in the ground.

Between 2018 and 2022, Turkey lost more than 38,000 hectares of vineyards (for comparison, New Zealand has roughly the same number of vineyards in total), although many of the losses were for nuts or distilling, with farmers switching to more profitable crops such as apples and nectarines. And there is little respect for old vines, which should be considered one of the country’s richest wine resources, as they tend to produce better wine and can withstand the vagaries of the weather better than young ones.

The 84 wines I tasted in Istanbul in 2009 included a total of six Turkish grape varieties, mostly as minor components in blends with international varieties. But now producers are much more proud of their indigenous grapes. Çeviker managed to feature 31 different Turkish grape specialties in the 64 wines he showed me, and told me that there are now no fewer than 68 of them included in wines in commercial circulation, many of them proudly advertised on the front label as single-variety wines.

The Tekirdağ national vine collection includes at least 854 different varieties. Not all of them are wine grapes, however. Despite the recent decline, Turkey still has the fifth-largest vineyard area in the world and remains the largest producer of raisins, while only 3 percent of the country’s vineyards produce grapes intended for winemaking.

But what wines! There is a huge variety of distinctive flavors and styles, thanks in part to the creativity of the winemakers. I tried wines made from tree vines (adult trees), wines in particularegg-shaped fermentation vessels, wines aged in egg-shaped barrels to encourage lees circulation, a Riesling-like wine made in oak from the grape responsible for sultanas, a trendy pét-nat, and a white wine fermented with grape skins left over from red winemaking.

Between 2018 and 2022, Turkey lost more than 38,000 hectares of vineyards (New Zealand has about the same amount in total), with farmers switching to more profitable crops such as apples.

Thanks to the country’s geography and geopolitics, there are also plenty of non-Turkish influences. Turkey is bordered, clockwise, by Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. I tasted wine grown on the border with Armenia, at 1,780 metres (higher than any European vineyard); wines made from Georgian, Syrian and Cretan grape varieties; and wines from the Kurdish area, which not long ago was a no-go zone.

A century ago, the infamous “population exchange” took place, when Greeks were expelled from Turkey and Turkish citizens residing in Greece were forcibly repatriated. Many of the Greeks were skilled and enthusiastic winegrowers. Their exodus greatly diminished the wine culture that Turkey had after centuries of Ottoman rule. It would not be surprising if some of the grape varieties thought to be Turkish turned out to have Greek origins.

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Having seen, indeed encouraged, a globalization increase in appreciation of Greek winesWith its wide range of grapes and terroirs, I would love to see Turkish wine become more appreciated outside of Turkey. (There is also a parallel with another wine-producing country that can offer an exciting range of indigenous wine styles and flavours: Portugal.)

But at the moment, in the US, for example, the “Turkey” offerings on Wine-searcher are dominated by Wild Turkey whisky. There are only a handful of Turkish wines available in the UK, and even Turkish master sommelier Isa Bal, formerly of Fat Duck and now with his own Michelin-starred restaurant, Trivet In London, the winery’s exceptionally eclectic wine list features very few Turkish producers. Turkish wine exports currently account for just 3 percent of the country’s output and are worth just £8.5 million – about a tenth of what a single release of a premium Bordeaux wine costs.

During my speech at the meeting of wine lovers, winemakers and wine professionals in Istanbul, the room erupted in knowing laughter when I suggested that the only way they could make progress in exporting their wine was by working together.

However, as we all sat sipping wine by the Bosphorus at the post-conference reception, Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, another speaker and director of Greek wine producer Gaia Wines, agreed with me, adding: “If we Greeks can cooperate with each other, surely the Turks can too.” He also noted that “if a company manages to sell abroad, it doesn’t mean anything. You need a generic body.”

Somehow, Wines of Greece manages to find its way around individual producers and the government, but Wines of Turkey has been reduced to a shadow of what it was between 2008 and 2014. So for the time being, it’s probably best to try to find wines from the country’s biggest producers – Doluca, Kavaklidere, Kayra, Pamukkale and Sevilen – who have probably taken the trouble to export.

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates in Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.comInternational distributors in Wine Finder.com

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