Aegean Vineyards and Turkish Wine Touched by Women
Many are shocked to discover the high percentage of women who work in the Turkish wine industry. Something like 65% are women including winery owners, viticulturalists, winemakers and oenologists, and especially, harvest technicians.
Last March, I wrote a piece for The Vintner Project about women in the Turkish wine industry. My friend and colleague in wine, if you will, Tûba de Wilde has gone beyond just writing and takes a different approach to highlighting women in the industry.
Vinatuu Wine Explorer & Event Maker
After completing her bachelor of Tourism and Event Management in Bruges, Belgium, Tûba worked in tourism and communications around Europe while continuously training via courses and seminars on PR, events management, and leadership. Her wine education first started as an after work hobby course at Syntra Brussels and continued at the same institution with an aspiring sommelier training. WSET 3 education followed at Wine Wise Antwerp.
Tûba is currently based in Ankara, Turkey, where she founded founded Vinatuu Wine Explorer & Event Maker and is the representative for the Women in Wine Expo Turkey.
Tûba’s Ankara-based activities include a new series of events highlighting the women involved with Turkish wine. The events bring together women from the various regions who present their wine journey and wines to guests during a tasting, after which, guests enjoy a dinner with regional dishes paired with yet more wines.
Native Grapes of the Aegean
For her February event, Aegean Vineyards Touched by Women, Tûba invited me to speak about native grapes. When she first asked, I felt less than enthusiastic because I couldn’t figure out how to fill 10 minutes on Bornova Misketi. But I soon remembered that Çavuş, Sultaniye, Sıdalan, Karalahna, Vasilaki, Karasakız, Foça Karası, Çalkarası, and Çakal Üzümü all also hail from the Aegean!
This being a very different kind of presentation than I’m used to doing, and to a larger crowd who’d had very little wine beforehand, I had crazy butterflies going in. And did I mention I presented first? Eeek! Three slides into my presentation, while rambling slightly incoherently about the general climate in the region, I managed to unintentionally break the ice. I wanted to say something about the varied elevations in the Aegean, but the word ‘elevation’ fell completely out of my head. I looked blankly at the other presenters and without thinking said: “Rakım ingilizcede nedir?” They all laughingly chorused back “elevation”. A word, as one of them pointed out, I’m unlikely to ever again forget!
The rest of the evening went swimmingly with wonderful presentations and tastings from 7Bilgeler, Ezel, Hus Wines, Sevilen, and Paşaeli. All of whom, despite speaking English as a second and not first language, managed to remember all the words!
My lack of English skills aside, this was a truly wonderful evening. The events Tûba puts together are something very new in Turkey and invaluable in not only opening up the Turkish wine world to more people but also celebrating the women involved.