The Thrace Wine Competition brings together most of the region’s producers each year. For its third edition, in 2017, 61 bottles from 10 producers were judged in a blind tasting that ran a full day.
I organise the competition, as founder of Vinipedia Wine Consultancy, with the support of Ekrem Eşkinat, mayor of Süleymanpaşa. The jury is international and has three members: Roger Bohmrich, Master of Wine, Peter McCombie, Master of Wine, and Andreas Larsson.
The rule that defines the competition is strict and fits in a sentence: every grape must have been grown in Turkish Thrace, and every bottle produced and bottled there. No exceptions, whatever the size of the producer. That is what makes the exercise comparable from one year to the next.
Judges who had sat on several editions noted a clear rise in overall quality: nine gold medals that year, against five in the first year and four in the second.
The column then widens the frame. Turkish Thrace is bordered by three seas, the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the northern Aegean, which creates micro-climates well suited to the vine. Chalky mountains, floodplain forests, sunflower fields, cherry orchards and vineyards on gentle slopes: a gastronomic destination, the author writes, still waiting to be explored and documented.