Blog

The Ancient Wine Culture of Antioch

 

---

For this month’s Wine Pairing Weekend, Nicole at Somm’s Table invited us to write about wines from the ancient world. People often forget to include Turkey, which in fact is the home of the vitis vinifera grape, when talking about ancient and old world wine cultures. In fact though, it has one of the most ancient of wine cultures.

When Christians hear the name, Antioch, it evokes images if Saints Peter and Paul preaching the Good News to early Christians. Historians may muse on the lives of early civilizations like the Hittites and those that came before. Modern Turks (and the rest of us who live here!) think of Antioch, or Hatay as it is now called, and drool over some of the best food this country has to offer. Being both Catholic and an enthusiast of the fermented grape, I think of wine.

And maybe its just a coincidence that this month’s Ancient Wines #WinePW chat is happening Easter weekend…but I prefer to think it was fate. Certainly it’s what inspired me to choose wines from this part of Turkey!

History & wine production

The Hittites, who ruled Anatolia from around 1700 – 1200 BC had a deep connection with wine. Archaeological digs across the region have turned up hieroglyphs and relief work featuring vines, grapes, and drinking cups. Wine was important to both their culture and economy. So much so that there is evidence that the Hittites laid down some of the earliest recorded wine and viticulture regulations. The vine and wine were so important in fact that they called Turkey (or at least the part they ruled) “’Wiyanawanda” or “land of the grapevine.” It’s from the Hittite word for wine “wiyana” that many modern languages take their own names for wine.

After the Hittites came the Greeks, the Romans, and then the Byzantines. And we know they all like a sip of wine. While Anatolia would eventually come under Ottoman rule, which effectively outlawed wine and winemaking for the majority of its population, thousands of years of vine cultivation and winemaking could not be erased.

Antioche Bağları and Barburi

Winemaking is a living tradition in the region. However, until recently it was a tradition that was kept at home where families made wine for their own consumption. In 2007 Hatay became host to its first modern, commercial winery. Given the name Antioche Bağları to honor the area’s history, the winery is founder Abud Abdo’s monument to not only his own love of wine, but also to the region’s strong wine culture.

Abud and Antioche Bağları achieved another milestone in 2016 with his release of Turkey’s first (commercial) 100% Barburi wine. Until then, Barburi had been one of the region’s best kept secrets. For generations locals used this grape to make home wine and pekmez (grape molasses) but no one was cultivating it. Traditionally, locals foraged grapes from vines growing wild in the area’s forests where old vines have crept up into the trees. However, lack of care has caused even these wild vines to slowly disappear making the grapes increasingly rare to find. Abud’s grandparents were among those using these wild berries to make wine at home. In 2008 he and his team located a few of the remaining wild vines and took cuttings for the vineyard to try to cultivate it properly.

Food Culture

Turkey’s Hatay region is famous for not only its history but its food and is widely recognized as being home to some of the country’s best flavors. Greatly influenced by its Levantine neighbors Lebanon and Syria, and by travelers who approached the area from the Mediterranean, Hatay’s foods embrace and make their own a host of flavors found nowhere else in Turkey. A number of famous foods come from Hatay including künefe, baba ganoush, hummus, cevizli biberli, pomegranate vinegar, and a wide variety of meat dishes like tepsi kebabı and kağıt kebabı.

Turkish food is notoriously difficult to pair with wine. Perhaps the melding pot of flavors that go into Hatay food make it more friendly. Or the millennia old wine tradition planted a seed in the region’s people to incline them towards wine-friendly cooking. Whatever it is, here more than anywhere else in Turkey, food and wine have found a happy meeting place. Antioch, which also runs Konak, one of the city’s best restaurants, is at the top of its game pouring libations and feeding people.

So naturally, for this month’s Ancient Wines #WinePW I’m pairing two of their wines with some traditional Hatay dishes!

The Wines and Pairing

To pair with both the Antioche Barburi and Premium Barburi I made two of my favorite Hatay dishes, tepsi kebabı and cevizli biberli, and topped it all off with some of the region’s salty yogurt and a chopped salad dressed with pomegranate vinegar. There are a variety of recipes out there for both the tepsi kebabı and cevizli biberli. For the first I used the recipe from Özlem’s Turkish Table – a great resource for Turkish recipes. My cevizli biberli recipe though came from my friend Istanbites.

Quick side not on cevizli biberli vs muhammara: People outside Turkey will be mostly familiar with muhammara which, as I understand, must include walnuts, pomegranate vinegar, lemon juice, and pepper; whereas cevizli biberli is a little more flexible and can include a type of Turkish cheese called beyaz peynir (literally ‘white cheese’) and fresh herbs (I used mint).

Beginning with the Antioche Bağları  2018 Barburi; this wine received no oak ageing at all. With this wine, Antioche wants you to be able to experience the purest expression of Barburi. In the glass the wine is purple. Not purple-tinged ruby; full-on purple. Fruit-forward with aromas of blackberry and blueberry, violets, and hints of black pepper. Sipping revealed and easy drinking, fruity wine with flavors reflective of the nose, 13.5% abv, silky tannins, and medium acidity.

This is a food wine. It’s a lovely drink on its own but the wine wants food and it goes particularly well with the regional specialties; even with the salad! The pomegranate vinegar with which I dressed the salad really brought out the wine’s fruitiness whereas the wine tamed the spice in the cevizli biberli. A perfect pairing with the tepsi kebabı as well. It balanced the acidity of the tomato sauce and stood up to the strong flavors of the meat cumin-heavy seasoning.

While I’ve had this Barburi a couple few times before, this was the first time I tried the Antioche Bağları Premium Barburi, a wine Antioche only recently debuted. The Premium Barburi (also a 2018) aged for 12 months in French oak. This is a limited bottling for the winery with just over 2000 bottles released. This had an entirely different character that the other wine; starting from the color (a deep ruby with a violet core) to the rich, spicy nose. Black currants mingled with cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, and caramel aromas. I dare say there was a bit of espresso bean hanging around in there as well. On the palate the wine expressed a more muted spice profile with sweet tobacco and currants.

This was less food friendly, completely overwhelming the salad. It didn’t not go with the kebab but neither did they do each other any favors. I did, however, enjoy it with the cevizli biberli as it pulled out the walnut nuttiness in the dish.

If you have any thought at all to visiting Turkey (when we’re all able to travel again!) I highly recommend including time for a trip to Hatay. You’ll get the chance to experience some of the incredible history that has touched Antioch by visiting the cave church of St. Peter and the excellent city museum. Foodies can wander through the city’s outdoor food markets and sample some of the region’s specialty ingredients. And all food and wine lovers are welcome at the Antioche Bağları Konak restaurant where the Abdo family proudly continues Antioch’s long wine tradition.

Ancient Wine #WinePW Reads!

Be sure to also check out what my fellow Wine Pairing Weekend bloggers discovered on their journey with Ancient Wines!

• Nicole from Somm’s Table will be sharing “An Armenian Feast with Friends Paired with Armenian Wines”
• Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla will be sharing “History on the Table – A Dish from the Hundred Years War Meets Wine from the Land of the Bible: Cassoulet + Tabor Adama Shiraz 2013”
• Wendy of A Day on the Life on the Farm will be enjoying “Clams Tossed in Herbs and Spaghetti with a Santo Assyrtiko”
• Terri of Our Good Life is taken with “Old World Charm: Tifosi Vino Bianco with Olives and Citrus”
• David of Cooking Chat is “Tasting and Pairing Ancient World Wines”
• Pinny of Chinese Food & Wine Pairings is making the case to “Drink Ancient Saperavi and Eat Modern Family Meals from Chinese Takeouts”
• Linda from My Full Wine Glass discovers “Agiorgitiko: Modern Greek Wine from an Ancient Land”
• Gwendolyn of Wine Predator shares an “Ancient Wine for Modern Times: Slovenia’s Jarenincan and Calamari with Lemon Caper Sauce”
• Cindy of Grape Experiences looks at “Aglianico – An Ancient Variety That Ages Well”
• Susannah of Avvinare will be sipping an “Ancient Wine from Campania- Falerno del Massico”
• Jane of Always Ravenous is talking about “Food and Wine in Ancient Greece”.