History of Wine in Anatolia

Murat Yankı who is a wine instructor and a sommelier has been doing research on history of wine for the past 10 years and has been teaching in various seminars and universities ever since.  He is also a professional tourist guide and spends a large part of the year in his vineyards in Cappadocia area.

He started his seminar with the famous quote of Gaius Plinius Secundus,  “In Vino Veritas” - In wine [there is the] truth. Yankı continued the seminar by showing some photographs of various artifacts, he has taken all over Anatolia during his travels, that shows wine and grape related findings.

“The excavations that took place in Çeşme near Bağlararası area, the findings were enough to change the known history of Anatolia, especially about the topic of wine. In the findings the archeologists have found an ancient winery, dating back to 1700 B.C., the Hitite period. This winery has been noted as the oldest winery in all of Anatolia.”  Murat Yankı shared a few pictures from the excavation and some of the findings.

“During the construction of the Marmaray Line since 2004, there has been a total of 37 ships recovered from under the sea. Among three of them, amphoras with grape seeds were found, which indicated that they carried wine. However we do not believe these wines were brought over from Black Sea, but rather from Ganos area, which is the south Thrace area of Şarköy, Mürefte and Hoşköy.  These findings will enlighten us with our research on Byzantian wine making.”

Towards the end of the seminar, Mr. Yankı talked about wine making and consumption during Ottoman and Republic periods. After the seminar the participants got a chance do a mini wine tasting with Mr. Yankı involving five different types of wines made with local grapes.

16 April 2014

Lecture video is in Turkish.