A Sip of Wine — Vine-Growing and Native Grapes in Anatolia

In Anatolia, a sip of wine has six thousand years of history behind it. This land was one of the first places where grapes were turned into wine — and it is still home to native grape varieties found nowhere else in the world.

The history of wine in Anatolia

Archaeological evidence shows that the grapevine was first domesticated along a belt running from south-eastern Anatolia to the Caucasus. The earliest traces of wine in this region go back as far as the 4th millennium BC.

For the Hittites, wine was part of both everyday life and religious ceremony; their tablets even include laws on vine-growing. The Urartians planted vineyards around Van, and the Phrygians and Lydians carried the tradition on. The rock-cut cellars of Cappadocia are among the most visible evidence of the region’s winemaking past.

Native grape varieties

Türkiye’s most precious legacy is its native grapes, which are not grown in any other country:

• Öküzgözü (Elazığ) — a soft, fruity red with balanced acidity
• Boğazkere (Diyarbakır) — tannic and firmly structured; usually blended with Öküzgözü
• Kalecik Karası (Ankara) — light-bodied, with red-fruit aromas
• Narince (Tokat) — white; high in acidity and well suited to ageing in oak
• Emir (Nevşehir) — a fresh white grown in the volcanic soil of Cappadocia

These varieties were largely forgotten in the 20th century and have been taken seriously again over the past thirty years.

Wine-growing regions

Production is concentrated in four main regions: Thrace (cool climate, European varieties), the Aegean (the belt from Bozcaada to Manisa), Cappadocia (high altitude, volcanic soil) and Eastern Anatolia (the homeland of Öküzgözü and Boğazkere).

Türkiye is among the world’s leading grape producers, but most of its grapes end up as table grapes or raisins; only a small share goes into wine.

From grape to wine

In short, the process goes like this: the harvested grapes are crushed and left to ferment, either with their skins (for red) or once the skins have been removed (for white). The yeast turns the sugar in the grapes into alcohol. Red wine gets its colour and tannins from the skins — in most varieties the juice itself is colourless.

Once fermentation is over, the wine is left to rest — some in steel tanks, some in oak barrels. How long it rests, and in what, shapes much of its taste.

Serving

Temperature has a direct effect on taste: whites are drunk at 8–12°C and reds at 14–18°C. “Room temperature” means the temperature of stone buildings, not of centrally heated homes — at 24 degrees, a red wine’s alcohol comes to the fore and its aromas close up.

A wide glass increases the wine’s contact with the air and lets its aroma open up.

A note

This page looks at Anatolia’s history of vine-growing and wine as a cultural subject. In Türkiye, the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks is restricted by law to people aged 18 and over; drinking to excess is harmful to your health.

For the alcohol-free stops in the series, take a look at the pages on şerbet (a traditional sweet drink), şalgam (fermented black carrot juice) and boza (a fermented millet drink).