Bring back ‘Stone Age Beaujolais’

>From the Bosphorus: Straight

Hurriyet
February 9, 2009

Wine snobs in Bordeaux or California’s Sonoma valley will
probablydisagree with us. But we believe history’s most important wine
producing area is eastern Turkey. For according to molecular biology
researchersat 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 ElazıÄ=9F 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 weekendstory on efforts in
ElazıÄ=9F to produce the first villager-led wineproduction.

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 ElazıÄ=9F, aimed at producing a strong market for
thesurrounding 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 pricesare 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 areaplanted 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 ElazıÄ=9F needs nurturing and
maturation. But when its time comes, wine produced in its birthplace
can make a great contribution to development in eastern Turkey.