Bring back ’Stone Age Beaujolais’
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Şubat 09, 2009 00:00
Wine snobs in Bordeaux or California’s Sonoma valley will probably disagree with us. But we believe history’s most important wine producing area is eastern Turkey. For according to molecular biology researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Ankara, this is where it all began.
What one researcher calls "Stone Age Beaujolois Nouveau" probably emerged somewhere near the headwaters of the Tigris River, in the environs of today’s Elazığ as long ago as 8,500 B.C. Most probably, this involved hunters and gatherers slurping fermented juice made out of wild grapes from animal-skin bags. Not our idea of a chic tasting where one swirls the glass and mutters a profundity like "...hmmm... notes of pear... with a butterscotch finish." But it is a fact worth repeating in light of our weekend story on efforts in Elazığ to produce the first villager-led wine production.
Efforts are still pending to pinpoint the origin of wine grape domestication. But it is most certainly in eastern Turkey. From there, the skills and cultivars spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Today, at the retail level, this is all something on the order of a $60 billion to $80 billion sector depending on how you count.
The project in Elazığ, aimed at producing a strong market for the surrounding villagers’ grape production, already has nearly 500 villagers joined in a cooperative. The head of the project, Hüsamettin Kaya, is trying to line up something on the order of 20 million Turkish liras from investors or perhaps through European Union grants. In this sense, the project may still be a bit "young" in vintner jargon. For wine production and retailing is an increasingly sophisticated business. Farmers in California monitor sugar levels and pest infestations in vineyards with airplane-mounted infrared sensors. World market prices are driven by the industry’s equivalent of Dow Jones, the "Vin-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index," down 20 percent on the world economic crisis. Just in the past six years, world acreage planted in wine grapes has grown by some 210,000 hectares. That’s about a third of Turkey’s entire area planted in grapes from which 98 percent are sold as fresh fruit or raisins. This is a volatile, global business where the neophyte can easily get burned.
But Turkey has somewhere between 600 and 1,000 indigenous varieties of grape, only about 60 of which are commercially exploited. Turkey has the marketing edge that might come from a legitimate claim in having started it all. And the country has a need and interest in diversifying the economy, particularly in agriculture.
Like a good wine, this idea in Elazığ needs nurturing and maturation. But when its time comes, wine produced in its birthplace can make a great contribution to development in eastern Turkey.
Efforts are still pending to pinpoint the origin of wine grape domestication. But it is most certainly in eastern Turkey. From there, the skills and cultivars spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Today, at the retail level, this is all something on the order of a $60 billion to $80 billion sector depending on how you count.
The project in Elazığ, aimed at producing a strong market for the surrounding villagers’ grape production, already has nearly 500 villagers joined in a cooperative. The head of the project, Hüsamettin Kaya, is trying to line up something on the order of 20 million Turkish liras from investors or perhaps through European Union grants. In this sense, the project may still be a bit "young" in vintner jargon. For wine production and retailing is an increasingly sophisticated business. Farmers in California monitor sugar levels and pest infestations in vineyards with airplane-mounted infrared sensors. World market prices are driven by the industry’s equivalent of Dow Jones, the "Vin-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index," down 20 percent on the world economic crisis. Just in the past six years, world acreage planted in wine grapes has grown by some 210,000 hectares. That’s about a third of Turkey’s entire area planted in grapes from which 98 percent are sold as fresh fruit or raisins. This is a volatile, global business where the neophyte can easily get burned.
But Turkey has somewhere between 600 and 1,000 indigenous varieties of grape, only about 60 of which are commercially exploited. Turkey has the marketing edge that might come from a legitimate claim in having started it all. And the country has a need and interest in diversifying the economy, particularly in agriculture.
Like a good wine, this idea in Elazığ needs nurturing and maturation. But when its time comes, wine produced in its birthplace can make a great contribution to development in eastern Turkey.