Why you should discover Çal, Turkey’s newest wine trail

17.10.2023 - 19:55 / nationalgeographic.com

There’s nothing like the first sip of a creamy Chardonnay after a long drive on a sunny day. In the garden at Kuzubağ, a winery in southwest Turkey, a cold glass slips down easily. The Aegean breeze rustles the leaves, the sunset paints the open skies rusty orange and resident feline Misket jumps up for a belly rub. “Our cats appreciate attention,” says vineyard owner Aslı Kuzu, before gently shooing her away.

Kuzubağ is in the Çal district, a wine region responsible for 40% of all Turkish wine. The drive here takes you through olive orchards and melon farms that give way to vast vineyards, stretching in orderly rows over hill after hill.

“Çal isn’t the first name that comes to mind when you think of Turkish wine, but we’re hoping to change that,” says Aslı. Turkey has a long history of winemaking with evidence of production in the wider region going back 7,000 years. Today, however, despite being the world's sixth largest grape producer, the country only accounts for a tiny proportion of the world's wine production, while wine consumption per person is around one twentieth of that in the UK. Yet there are signs of a shift, with the number of independent producers growing fivefold to more than 200 over the last decade.

“Families in Çal have been involved in viticulture for generations.” “Seven hundred years,” adds Seray Kocaemre, a consultant for wineries in the region, who’s joined us in Kuzubağ’s garden. “And we have evidence of production here dating back thousands of years."

The Kuzu family are Çal-born and bred. “When I was a kid,” says Aslı’s mother Ayşe, “wine was not as important here. We’d use the best grapes for making raisins, then the rest for molasses and whatever was left for wine. But people have started to see that wine is the lifeblood of Çal and that it deserves more attention.”

While they’ve farmed for generations, the Kuzu family opened their winery only three years ago. Yet they’ve put Çal on the map among wine-lovers in Turkey and beyond. This year, the winery's Öküzgözü-Shiraz 2021 has won the gold medal at Decanter World Wine Awards, while their 2022 Chardonnay took the gold medal at AWC Vienna International Wine Challenge. Aslı, who leads the operation, is the country’s youngest female winemaker. “We’re proud of the medals our wines have won in international competitions, and God knows we’ve celebrated them well,” she smiles. “But changing the perception of a region is only possible through collective action.”

In that spirit, Kuzubağ and three fellow wineries came together to create a trail that offers vineyard tours and tastings. The Çal Wine Route begins with Erdel, where preparations for the grape harvest are in full swing during my visit. After a tour of the production