The Guide Istanbul devoted its wine pages to me in the March and April 2012 issue. The interview was by Yeşim Yenmi, and the credit under the headline read “Wine Coach & Owner at Vinipedia Wine Consultancy”. Vinipedia was not yet a year old. I described the work in two halves that have not changed since: professional consulting for restaurants, on their lists and on their teams, and events for people who simply want to drink better, meaning tastings, themed dinners built around food and wine pairings, and corporate evenings. I was also starting to organise wine tours in both directions, incoming and outgoing, with the idea of putting history and gastronomy on the same itinerary: Istanbul first, then Thrace, then the Aegean coast, and Cappadocia after that.
The magazine asked how I had got there. I went to a French lycée in Istanbul and then to university in Nice, and that is where wine began to interest me; I visited a great many wineries in France and Italy in those years. Back in Turkey I joined ADCO as an assistant brand manager and learned a great deal there. The important thing I learned is that I love wine, which is why I started taking training courses, and then took the advanced certificate of the UK-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust. In 2010 I became the first woman to compete in the Turkish Sommelier Competition and came second, and the same year I went to Spain to represent Turkey at the International Young Sommelier Competition organised by the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, where I finished fourth out of twelve. After working for several companies in the sector I decided to set up on my own.
Then came the question I like: what had changed in Turkish wine over the previous five years. A great deal, and mostly for the better. There was far more imported wine, and it had become somewhat less expensive because the tax system had moved to a flat rate, which made the more expensive bottles more affordable. Small wineries were multiplying, which is the clearest sign that local production had changed. The big local players had improved their quality and started boutique ranges of their own. The result was more quality in the sector, and consumers who were learning to ask for it.
I was just as clear about what was holding the sector back, and I would say the same things in the same order. Alcohol could not be sold over the internet. Shelf fees in the large supermarkets were too expensive for small producers, so they could not easily get their wine in front of a buyer, and that was felt hardest in the smaller cities, where there were people who wanted good wine and no straightforward way to buy it. Online sales matter for exactly those producers and exactly those drinkers. On top of that there were import taxes and a good deal of paperwork, restaurant floor staff were often not properly trained, which hurts the guest and the sector alike, and the sponsorship agreements between large producers and restaurants left boutique producers very little room.
The part I was most enthusiastic about was the meeting of two kinds of knowledge. A lot of foreign consulting was arriving in Turkey at the time. The position I took then is the one I still hold: local producers have to learn their own terroir and their own grape varieties, and they should also draw on the experience of consultants who have seen more. The good outcome comes from mixing the two. There were no oenology studies in Turkey in those years, but people who had read food engineering here were going abroad for a master’s in oenology and coming back, which was very good for the sector. More companies, more producers, more competition, and things improving quickly right across the board in a way they were not in Europe.
I was asked which wines and vineyards to watch, and I named names. Barbare and Urla were the two to follow. Chateau Kalpak in Şarköy and Çamlıca in Kırklareli were both experimenting with new grapes and were due on the market that year. Tomurcukbağ was working with wild yeast on Kalecik Karası. For anyone travelling for the beauty of the place rather than for the bottle, I recommended Urla, the Pendore vineyards at Salihli in Manisa, the Şükrü Baran vineyards in Elazığ and the village of Hoşköy, which is very pretty and has wonderful views. Vinolus, the first vineyard in Kayseri, I had heard a great deal about and had not yet managed to visit.
The magazine also asked me to compile three lists of seven: Turkish whites, reds and rosés. They are a photograph of 2012 and should be read that way, since most of those vintages were drunk long ago. Among the whites were the Kavaklıdere Côtes d’Avanos from Cappadocia and the Umurbey Sauvignon Blanc from Tekirdağ; among the reds the Barbare Elegance from the Thrace Valley and the Tomurcukbağ Trajan Reserve Kalecik Karası; among the rosés the Urla Serendias and the Paşaeli Çalkarası. I added a practical note at the foot of the page, because a list is no use if the bottles cannot be found: the boutique wines were to be looked for in specialist wine shops, while the larger houses were already on the supermarket shelves.
The last part of the interview was about Istanbul rather than about wine, and I answered it honestly. I love everything about the city except the traffic. I grew up in Etiler. Real çiğ köfte, olive oil dishes and mezes, the spicy ones above all. Breakfast by the water at Rumeli Hisarı. Ulus 29, where I had watched the food, the wine and the service being looked after year after year, and then Mikla, La Brise, Sunset and Giritli. The view I miss is the one from Mikla, where you see the Bosphorus and the old and the new city at once; what I miss when I am away is Turkish white cheese. My idea of a weekend was the vineyards of Tekirdağ and the Lavanda Hotel at Şile. Reading it back today, the sentence that has aged best is not about a bottle or a restaurant: it is that a producer has to know their own terroir. That is still the argument I make.