“The wine, the game of chance”, he was “an abomination and work of the devil. Avoid it so that you may fare well.” This passage in the Koran is law for many Muslims; for them wine, like any alcohol, is taboo. Burak Özkan is a Muslim, he lives in an Islamic country, even in a fairly conservative part of Turkey, in south-western Anatolia. And he doesn’t just drink wine – he even grows it.
Burak Özkan is one of the few private winemakers in Turkey; a winegrower whose grape juice is appreciated by connoisseurs and has also received many international awards. As fine and coveted as his wines from the Elmali region in the province of Antalya are – Özkan has to fight against many opponents: against strictly religious neighbors, but above all against the government in Ankara, the national advertising bans, the horrendous alcohol taxes. The authoritarian policies of President Erdogan are making it increasingly difficult for winegrowers to keep the millennia-old cultural asset of wine alive in Turkey.
Anyone who tastes Özkan’s wines on the pretty panoramic terrace of his Likya winery will understand why he is so committed to the winemaking tradition in his homeland. What is pressed here, around two hours by car from the city of Antalya in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, tastes excellent.
Source: Infographic WORLD
For example, the pleasantly dry red wine Öküzgözü (Ox Eye), made from a local grape variety with this bizarre name. Or the Likya Arkeo Fersun, a true discovery. The light red wine has an aromatic scent of cherries, strawberries, roses and vanilla; when drinking it pleases with soft tannins. The old grape variety Fersun, from which it is created, was discovered by Özkan in a nearby mountain village of that name and saved it from extinction.
It tastes even better on the terrace of the Likya winery with a view of the imposing mountains – the surrounding three-thousanders of the Taurus Mountains. Özkan and his team serve olives, beef salami and homemade bread for the wine tasting. The nearby town of Elmali, where there are good places to stay, lures with a picturesque old town.
The climate is almost ideal for wine
Here you can enjoy wine in a landscape that was already inviting in ancient times. In the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, the Hittites planted vines 4000 years ago, followed by Greeks and Romans. Winegrowing in the Orient declined with Islam. Because although there are passages in the Koran that praise the “intoxicating drink” as a god-given benefit, and even if the wine and aniseed schnapps culture lived on locally: according to strict interpretation, alcohol is strictly forbidden for Muslims.
At the beginning of the last century, with the secularization of the country by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, winegrowers ventured out again in Turkey, who quickly found a large number of grateful customers. Two large companies founded at that time still sell wine today – mostly bulk goods to the all-inclusive tourist hotels. Over 100 small, private wineries have been added in recent decades, only a dozen of them produce really good wine.
Burak Özkan is clearly involved in the leading group. The demands of the winemaker are high. When he entered the grape juice business in 1998, he first collected information: is the climate really suitable for viticulture, which vines thrive best, what does a good winegrower have to learn?
Özkan went through the weather data for the last 20 years and lo and behold: the climate is almost ideal. At 1000 meters above sea level, it is often 40 degrees hot during the day, and temperatures often drop to ten degrees at night. “Wine loves this violent change,” says Özkan, “and vines of the Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Acikara and Bogazkere varieties particularly like it.”
The winemaker has already won numerous awards
Wine is grown in seven Turkish regions, mainly on the Mediterranean coast, on the Aegean Sea and in Anatolia. There are around 450,000 hectares of vineyards in Turkey – four times as much as in Germany – although ten years ago there were significantly more. Of course, the vast majority is used for table grapes, grape juice and raisins – only about three percent are used to make wine and raki.
Like most small businesses, Burak Özkan can only survive because he finds customers abroad and in the Turkish middle class who can pay prices around 15 or 20 euros per bottle. Özkan’s efforts to ensure quality and his investments in the technical equipment from Germany, the presses from Switzerland, the bottling plant from Italy and the barrels from France have at least paid off ideally: he has already won 150 medals with his wines at international competitions.
The 40,000 bottles that his vineyards produced in the first few years have now grown to 500,000. Red and white wines are roughly balanced, “because tourists mainly drink whites in summer and reds in winter.”
Despite all resistance: Burak Özkan is one of the few private winegrowers in Turkey
Source: Joachim Hauck
The winegrower has repeatedly suffered setbacks. In the years after the failed putsch in 2016 and during the Corona epidemic, in which Turkey suffered a significant slump in tourism, Özkan was hit twice. “The Germans who like wine largely stayed away back then. The Russians have come back, but they don’t drink wine, they drink vodka.” The Turkish winemaker lost 50 percent of its sales at times.
Many good (and expensive) restaurants between Alanya and Bodrum have Likya wines on the menu, “but we can’t make a living from them any more than we can from the few exclusive hotels that buy our products,” says Özkan. Most all-inclusives on the coast serve cheap bottled wine, and Özkan would never make that.
So he has recently been trying to make sales with alternative products such as grape seed oil and sell more wine abroad. He has already won a few restaurants in Paris and Berlin as customers. In Germany, private individuals can now also order Likya wines online.
Strict alcohol regulations in Turkey
Survival is not made easy for Özkan. The initial resistance of the people in Elmali district has eased noticeably. He hardly has any problems with strict neighbors, because “a lot of people earn their money in my vineyards, and a lot of farmers sell me grapes from their fields”. But the economic and political environment remains difficult. The fact that the state collects a whopping 50 percent tax on every bottle of wine sold and that inflation has risen to 80 percent this year would be enough to make the winegrower despair.
But the government in Ankara followed suit: Özkan and other alcohol producers in Turkey are now no longer allowed to sell anything online. Organized trips to his winery are not allowed. Wine festivals, which brought many visitors to Elmali in the past, are now banned. Building a website for the winery yourself is not without risk: “If, for example, a wine bottle is shown there, there can be problems with the authorities,” says Özkan, who has switched off his website for the time being.
Years ago, President Erdogan announced that the popular raki made from grapes and aniseed was not the Turkish national drink, but the yoghurt drink Ayran. His government is acting accordingly: restaurants, bars and shops are not allowed to display the emblems of beer, wine and liquor producers. Advertising for alcohol on TV, radio and newspapers is strictly prohibited.
Turkey has long been one of the countries with the highest alcohol prices. Since Erdogan took office in 2002, the opposition calculates that raki, for example, has become 2,000 percent more expensive due to massive tax increases. Those who do not belong to the rich are increasingly buying cheap booze and moonshine – sometimes with devastating consequences for their health.
It is difficult to survive under such conditions as a producer of top-quality wines. He doesn’t know if and how long Burak Özkan can hold out. For the winemaker, there is no question that his commitment is worthwhile and important for the local economy, that good local wines are also an asset for Turkish tourism: “I can’t believe that the government doesn’t take advantage of this and instead makes life difficult for us understand.” It is to be hoped that more holidaymakers will discover Anatolian wine for themselves – as a valuable cultural asset that is threatened by politics.
Tips and information:
Getting there: For example with Corendon, Condor or Pegasus to Antalya, continue with the rental car. The Likya winery in Karyagdi near Elmali is about a two-hour drive from Antalya Airport. Visitors are welcome. Pre-registration at info@likyasarap.com is advisable. The new website of the Likya Winery is still under construction; the address is Karyagdi No. 1000, 07716 Ünal Özgödek Cadesi.
Accommodation: Simple, but good and cheap are the hotel “Arzu” or the “Akca” in Elmali. Bed and breakfast costs around 20 euros per room, the three-star hotels do not have their own websites. They can be booked via various international hotel portals.
Tipp: Burak Özkan’s wines can also be ordered in Germany via weinanatolien.de.
Information: General information about Turkey as a travel destination is available at goturkiye.com.