Ahr-winemaker makes top wines in Turkey

However, this is all in the past and Turkey is now open to wine. More and more wineries are growing table grapes on about 590 000 hectares of vineyards and they even invest in vinifications. Granted, only about 5 percent of grapes are used for making wine, but with an upward tendency. One company, the wine and spirits wholesaler Mey Icki, even founded a wine academy, which already had a couple of thousand of students, even a lot of private ones.

The "modern country" has received various gold and silver medals (which you should not be too proud of, since the jury's decisions are often not really justifiable). Some top wines can even be found in cities like Paris and London on the wine menues of top restaurants. The Kayra Imperial, one of the red wine top wines, was recently served to a group of wine experts in Berlin.

Most of the time, such activities are organized by the association Wines of Turkey, which was founded in 2008 and which owns 8 comanies. According to spokesperson Taner Öğutoğlu, the goal was to boost wine culture. On top of that, Turkey wants to focus on ethnic markets, which includes Turkish restaurants and food stores, and trade as well as top restaurants in the country.

If the Turks succeed, soon wine menues will show wines like Kalecik Karasi, Boğazkere, Öküzgözü, Emir and Narince. All these wines are autochtonous vines, which will be a "worth trying out" as it was said about Turkeys stand at the ProWein. It is a German who proves that Turkish ground has good potential and he is the one who has made probably the best red wine that has ever been produced in the Turkey!

Hermann-Josef Kreuzberg from Dernau along the Ahr-river worked as a winemaker in his family's well-known winery for a long time. Very good evaluations in wine guides and top awards from the German Red Wine Prize of the magazine Vinum show that Kreuzberg has a talent for making Pinot Noirs and that it later succeeded in making Cabernet Sauvignons (which used to be prohibited in the 90s). After a while he resented being his brother Ludwig's employee, who took over the business after his father had passed away. "I wanted to do something for myself", he says. In 2009 he and his wife finally got self-employed with a 2-hectare vineyard. Even before that, he and his wife had been in charge of another business.

Back then, Hermann-Josef Kreuzberg had a Turkish friend, namely Frank Josten, who made him curious about the wine-growing possibilities in Turkey. The trio and the THERA Winery added Mustafa Al, a longtime Turkish friend of Frank's. Together they found an appropriate area along the south-west coast across from the Greek island Rhodos in the province of Mugla, only 2.5 kilometers away from the Turkish Ägäis. It gets very dry there in the summer but the necessary humidity is brought by rain in the winter months. It was not easy to get the production permit, since there were many paperwork hurdles to overcome. Believe it or not, they are even tougher than here in Germany. The four of them also had to improvise a lot in terms of designing the cellar. In the end everything worked out, however, and barriques were imported from France and other technical necessities from Italy.

The blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with only 12.8% vol. (Photo: alaturka)

From perfect grapes, the wines of the vintage-Thera Winery (Photo: FJ)

In 2007 the very first wine by the Thera Winery was brought out, a Cuvée with 70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 30 percent Merlot. What is particularly remarkable about this wine that matured in a slightly-toasted wood, is the relatively low alcohol content of  "only" 12.8 percent vol, which was intended from the very beginning. "You have to be extremely careful with that in Turkey", the 54-year-old quickly realized. "If you let the grapes sit for one or two days more, the sugar content rises high". After 22 months of maturing in the barrique cellar the wines are filled into bottles without filters and then they mature in the bottle for one year. Now, the wine has arrived in Dernau and Kreuzberg sells it for 29 Euro a bottle.

Once you taste this wine you smell nuts, almonds, berries and bitter chocolate, a great mix of everything and complexity in the taste, hot fire and tenderness. Hermann-Josef Kreuzberg is thus a huge competition for his Ahr-Burgundy-makers. Copycats, who are still working on their own creations in Turkey, are hoping for the same success: "In this country you are less dependant on the seasons like in Germany". (r.knoll)