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Nadiya Bıçakcı: Carving a Different Path in Wine #WinePW

 

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Disclaimer: This post includes wines received as a sample. All opinions are my own.

This March, to celebrate International Women’s Day, Camilla from Culinary Cam invited those of us in the Wine Pairing Weekend writers to look at women in wine.

Turkey has a higher than average percent of women working in its wine industry. You can read a little bit about it, including a few featurettes of some of these women, in this piece I wrote for Vintner Project. The short story, is that more than one-third of Turkish wineries involve women in high-level positions, and almost all of them employ large numbers of women in the field. But not everyone who wants to work in wine has the desire to go the winery owner or winemaker route. Some people choose a different. Like Nadiya Bıçakcı, a wine entrepreneur.

I don’t often get over the Mahzen 26; it’s rather a hike from where I live. Google told me it would take 1.15 hours to get there via ferry then bus, so of course I gave myself 1.45 hours. Google lies so much. I still arrived 20 minutes late which made my Midwest soul shrink in horror. Nadiya brushed off my apologies, greeted me with a Turkish double-cheek kiss, and sat me down with some tea. Tea, I learned, is a passion of hers and she had several Azerbaijani teas (superior to Turkish apparently) from which to choose. 

Nadiya Bıçakcı

Nadiya Bıçakcı first came to Turkey in 1995. What began as a simple cultural exchange trip, Turkey soon became a refuge from the perestroika at home. A chance meeting with an old friend on her first day of university led to Nadiya rejoining a childhood folklore dance troupe. This allowed her to get a passport to represent Azerbaijan on a cultural trip to Ankara to celebrate Nevruz. A second trip took her to Antalya where, while dancing in the evening, she began working in tourism during the day. Subsequent return trips saw her moving away from tourism to sales and marketing for large hotel chains. Eventually, there was no more back and forth and Nadiya was here to stay. She moved to Istanbul and transitioned from hotels to retail working at Mavi, Levi, Colombia, then Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. 

After years in the industry, Nadiya grew bored with her career. To shake things up, she attended a liquor tasting given by well-known Turkish gourmand Mehmet Yalçın, then a wine tasting. Nadiya quickly fell in love with the stories he told jumped at the chance to start the WSET program, first with IWSA then with Turgut Tokgöz. For Nadiya, her fascination with wine started with the endless stories it tells: about its people, the grapes and land, and the smells. She told me: “I love wine much more by the nose than by the taste”.

Of course, she was still working during this period of discovery. Fashion sales and marketing took her around the world. When travelling, she looked for opportunities to try new wines. The stress of her career seemed to melt away when she was with wine. It changed her character, made her feel more calm and balanced. Soon she began collecting wines and participating in tasting clubs. Once, when attempting to create a vertical tasting of Turkish wines, she was horrified to realize that wineries kept no libraries of back vintages. Something that has only very recently begun to change.

Mahzen 26

Soon enough, Nadiya’s wine collection outgrew her living space. She and her husband had to navigate around boxes of wine stacked in every room. Summers and winters she shifted everything from inside to the balcony in an attempt to keep the wines at a stable temperature. A number of friends complained of the same problem. Then, the lightbulb. A commercial space on the ground floor of her apartment building came free. She knew it had a basement and realized what a perfect space this could be for a proper cellar. Her initial idea was to convert the basement and use the commercial space as an office and private tasting club. In fact, she never wanted to open a shop. Competition from the many other wine shops and wineries themselves, coupled with the ever more depressing Turkish economy means there’s not a lot of money in such a business.

However, when applying for business licenses, Nadiya ran into a snag. Of course there are storage facilities in Istanbul. Lots of them. It is not a new business model. But storing alcohol? No such ‘company type’ tick box existed. There are three commercial alcohol licenses in Turkey: retailer, restaurant, and wholesaler/distributor, not simply ‘storage’. In the end, Nadiya went with the cheapest: retailer. In the end, she did get her cellar, Mahzen 26, and it’s beautiful. Temperature and humidity controlled, clients can rent boxes or space for even just one bottle. I myself have two boxes of wine in storage there! Everything is done very professionally with databases listing your wines and their details (down to bottle serial numbers) and even pick up and drop off services! Several years on and she still doesn’t love having the wine shop. It’s not particularly lucrative. Especially not now as the many foreigners who were clients have fled to the greener and cheaper pastures of other countries. Ripe for a new challenge, Nadiya turned her eye to import/exports.

502 Vineyards Merzifon Karası Rosé

In a WSET 3 tasting group, Nadiya met Mert. Mert Atay and his wife Rifaa Wais returned to Turkey after years of living in Spain, where they discovered wine. They opened their own winery: 502 Vineyards, on the Black Sea, but missed Spanish wine. Together, Nadiya and Mert founded Global Wines, an import/expert company focused on Spain, Italy, Australia, the US, and New Zealand. 

Global Wines is in addition to Mahzen 26’s shop and cellar! Nadiya has truly proven to be an ingenious entrepreneur and demonstrated that there are more paths to being part of the wine world than are obvious at first glance.

Along with her Global Wines partnership with Mert, Nadia and Mahzen 26 are the leading Istanbul retailers for Mert and Rifaa’s 502 Vineyards. So, while I was there, we tasted together the wineries new rosé. A 100% Merzifon Karası, a grape local to the Black Sea region, the wine initially gave me a jumble of red fruits: some tart berries and mountain strawberries. But then, just a few minutes in the glass, and a whole new side emerged. Upfront the wine was sweet-tart with a nice amount of acidity flowing along the sides of the tongue, while the wine’s roundness filled my mouth leaving a lingering taste of berries with a hint of earthy. This was a wine that would both enhance and be enhanced by food. 

Bodegas Bilabaínas Viña Pomal, Rioja DOC

As Nadiya is not a winemaker, I asked her to choose her current favorite bottle in her shop. Not an easy task! While she mentioned several wines (including a number of Turkish wines), in the end, she selected one of the wines she imports. She said that she’s really been enjoying the Viña Pomal Fermentado en Barrica, 2022 for the last several months, and recommended pairing with ceviche. So that’s what I’ve done!

Founded in 1901, Bodegas Bilbaínas is a Rioja winery located in the Barrio de la Estación in Haro. Its Viña Pomal Fermentado en Barrica blends together Malvasia (70%) with Viura (30%). The grapes come from the winery’s enormous 120 hectare estate in Rioja Alta near the Ebro Rover with its deep, pebbly alluvial soils.  After destemming, a brief maceration and pressing, juice fermented in new American and French oak barrels. The wine was then aged in these same barrels on its lees for four months.

The wine poured a brilliant lemon-lime color with oaky top notes followed by aromas of smoked grapefruit skin, stone fruit, and fennel. On the palate it was medium-bodied with moderate alcohol (13%), and nice structure that was a little rounder upfront with acidity coming in on the mid and back palates. Flavors similar to those sensed on the nose with a squeeze of grapefruit and white stone fruit leading to a floral finish.

Personally, I could have done without the new oak, but still found the wine pleasant.

Nadiya’s pairing suggestion of ceviche was spot-on! The lime juice really amped up the wine’s citrus notes, while the tortilla chips on the their own highlighted the stone fruit flavors. 

Women in Wine Around the World

Don’t miss posts by the rest of the #WinePW team featuring more amazing women in wine!

• A Virtual Tasting with Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribó of Camins 2 Dreams + Roasted Portabello Risotto with their 2021 Santa Ynez Vineyard Carignan by Culinary Cam
• Celebrating So Much Love with Nicole Walsh’s 2022 Cabernet Pfeffer from Ser Winery by Culinary Cam
  

  

• Celebrating Women in Wine with Delta Airlines by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Exceptional Organic Wines by Sara Pérez at Mas Martinet in Spain’s Priorat DOC with Duck a la Espagnole, Eggplant Importancia, Couscous to Celebrate Women’s History Month by Wine Predator…Gwendolyn Alley
• Karen Birmingham: A Trailblazing Winemaker Celebrating International Women in Wine Month by Our Good Life
• Marked by COVID: The Legacy of Milla Handley along with Favorites of Evita Anderson and Ann Abney by Culinary Cam
• Nadiya Bıçakcı: Carving a Different Path in Wine by The Quirky Cork
• The Curated Pantry, Olive Oils, and Vinegars of Annelise Gerome, Culinary Creativity, and the Queen of the Vineyard’s Theopolis Rosé of Petite Sirah by Culinary Cam
• The Talents of Sophie Hauville and Vailia From Collide with Cheesy Seafood Pasta, a Valentines’ Cheeseboard, and Two Bottles of Desparada by Culinary Cam
• Women in Wine: Meet the Sonoma-Cutrer Winemakers by Cooking Chat