Underdog tales and stories of grapes under threat of extinction are catnip to us at The Wine Society. But of all the stories that have come across our collective desks over the years, that of the Yaban Kolektif has to be one of the most extraordinary. It’s the tale of two Turkish wine-loving friends, Umay Çeviker and Levon Bağış, whose passion for rare grape varieties overseas led them to investigate what treasures they had at home. They didn’t imagine what they’d find or that they would end up producing wines themselves.
we realised that the heritage that made Anatolia unique was at risk of vanishing. At some point, curiosity turned into responsibility.
A long history of winemaking
While The Wine Society has been listing a handful of wines from Turkey for some years now, a wine called ‘Boujas’ from Asia Minor first appeared in our 1885 List, just 11 years after we were founded. This hints at the historic importance of wine to Turkey’s economy, which by 1904 produced around 340m litres, most of which was exported to phylloxera-ravaged Europe. No doubt ‘Boujas’ was such a wine.
While Turkish wines may be less familiar to modern wine drinkers, the country’s wine roots run deep. There’s evidence of winemaking here going back millennia with the Hittites, Phrygians, Greeks and Byzantines all cultivating grapes and leaving traces of wine culture, rituals and vessels as proof.
Even under the Ottomans, non-Muslim communities were allowed to produce and trade wine, but in in the aftermath of the First World War and the War of Independence there was an abrupt hiatus. Greek and Armenian communities were forced to leave, taking with them not just knowledge and winemaking know-how but wine culture and traditions. Vineyards were abandoned and wineries became empty.
An entire class of artisans, merchants and winemakers was lost almost overnight, and with them, centuries of accumulated skill and continuity.
Today, despite Turkey having the world’s fifth-largest vineyard area, it produces under a million hectolitres (similar to Canada or Uruguay). Less than 2.9% of this is exported and with domestic consumption at under a litre per head (compared to 22 in the UK), the fragility of the industry is easy to understand.
Identity crisis in the modern era
Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, recognised that winemaking needed a leg up, establishing state-run wineries and encouraging education in viticulture. While keeping the flame alive, it led to a system that was monopolised, valuing quantity over quality. It wasn’t until the 1990s and the emergence of boutique wineries that there was a shift in approach. But the new vineyards were planted with commercial international varieties, capitalising on the demand for varietally labelled wines.
'Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone’
Today, despite new laws in 2013 banning promotion of alcohol and there being little support or incentives for producers, a vibrant wine scene survives with 160 producers (albeit down from 191 in 2024) made up largely of urban entrepreneurs rather than traditional growers.
The pace of loss of vineyards is staggering, though. In 1990 there were 580,000 hectares, by 2022 it had dropped to 410,000 ha – a loss equivalent to Australia’s total plantings. The vineyards that are disappearing are not the international varieties, but the old plots of ungrafted indigenous grapes grown by smallholders who can no longer justify the work involved.
An exercise in viti-archaeology
Umay Çeviker, an architect whose curiosity in wine became a commitment and Levon Bağış, already working for one of Turkey’s oldest wine producers, would meet often at wine events. They realised they shared the same desire ‘to look for the overlooked’. They felt compelled to act. Exploring Anatolia’s unique vineyards and little-known regions became a race against time.
With a tiny home market for wine, Umay and Levon realised they would be dependent upon the export market to save endangered grapes from extinction. Yaban Kolektif was created with the aim of commercialising forgotten grapes – the most obvious way to demonstrate Anatolia’s unique ungrafted indigenous varieties. Rather than a pure act of nostalgia, they wanted to reveal the potential of these grapes. They invited existing wineries to collaborate and work with the old varieties they discovered – the commercial imperatives to produce wines that offer the world something different helped their efforts gain traction.
Reuniting viticulture with winemaking
Ten years ago, Umay was awarded the Geoffrey Roberts Award by the Vintners’ Company enabling him to travel around Turkey researching and mapping old vineyard sites. He met farmers who made wine instinctively and came across the last vines of grapes like sungurlu which hadn’t been heard of since the 1970s. Then there was Erciş karası (the black grape from the town of Erciş) which they heard about through a local home winemaking group and tracked down to an Armenian settlement near the border with Iran in what is the highest vineyard in Europe.
the photos of clusters alone suggested a wine grape of true potential.
Yaban doesn’t own a winery and moves around the country to better spread the word and influence as many producers and growers as possible. As well as making wine from indigenous varieties they also work with international varieties like semillon, carignan, cinsault, gamay and Alicante – all planted in the last century but rarely fermented today.
They also work with the farmers to help them improve their vineyard practices and keep these old vines alive. In the winery they experiment to find the best expressions for the grapes, using modern tech where appropriate but making sure oak doesn’t mask flavour and favouring wild yeasts where possible.
Bringing the past to life
Thanks to the ongoing work of the Yaban Kolektif there is hope that we can get to know some of the forgotten wonders of the wine world and enjoy these ancient grapes in modern form.
The wines that buyer Fiona Hayes has selected for Wine Society members are not just redolent of ancient history but bear witness to the determination and resilience of those battling to bring them to our glass. When Julia Harding MW was researching the seminal Wine Grapes book, she wrote to Umay Çeviker to ask whether any commercial wines were still being made from the sungurlu grape. It was last seen in the 1970s in the province of Çorum, near the Hittite capital of Hattuşa, a major Bronze Age city. First attempts to track it down proved fruitless and so it could not be included in Wine Grapes. Several years later Umay returned to the region, better contacts leading him to the village of Ayağıbüyük outside the town of Sungurlu. Here he tracked down the last patch of old, ungrafted bush vines grown at over 1,000m and between 50 and 100 years old. From just five hectares in 2017, plantings have grown to 12 ha and cuttings planted in other areas too.
Map of wine production in Turkey in 2022
How to make a modern sungurlu?
With no living model for this grape Yaban explored its nature through different winemaking approaches. Dry wines always see some skin contact, ‘highlighting the variety’s lovely, bitter edge’ – the 2023 Sungurlu ‘Ayağıbüyük’, saw 80% of the wine aged on its lees (yeast deposit) in egg-shaped tanks for 10 months, with 20% fermented and aged in used oak barrels also on its lees, with bâttonage (stirring over) every day for three months.
The result is a wine full of citrus and quince notes with a mouthwatering salinity and lovely, almost waxy texture. Ageworthy and with appetising weight, the wine is made for a wide variety of foods – chicken tagine with preserved lemons and grilled veggies would work.
Creating Erciş karası in the 21st century
This light-bodied red (11.8% alc) from the far eastern border of Turkey on the shores of Lake Van, is thoroughly suited to modern tastes. The initial trials with just 20 kilos of grapes resulted in a very promising vibrant red and led the team to seek out a source for more grapes. Travelling to Erciş they met the growers and focused on a parcel tended with utmost care by Şahin Işler, whose grapes are at 1,770m. He employs a unique ‘baran’ method of training the vines whereby the trunks are covered in soil year-round to protect them from frosts at this altitude. The grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed and fermented in open-top fermenters and clay küps (amphorae) before undergoing 11 months’ maturation in clay küps and neutral oak barrels.
There’s a bright, pure-fruited core to this fresh, juicy red with flavours underpinned by fine tannins. Serve slightly chilled to appreciate it’s restrained concentration. Delicious with a sharing plate of charcuterie and cheeses.
