Turkish wine well received in UK at international conference

The event was the biggest and most comprehensive of its type focusing on the Turkish wine sector, says Taner Öğütoğlu, director of the Wines of Turkey platform, which organized the 'Discover the Roots - From Silvestris to Vinifera: Inaugural Wines of Turkey Conference & Tasting 2011' event. AA photo

The event was the biggest and most comprehensive of its type focusing on the Turkish wine sector, said Taner Öğütoğlu, director of the Wines of Turkey platform, which organized the “Discover the Roots - From Silvestris to Vinifera: Inaugural Wines of Turkey Conference & Tasting 2011" event.

He told the Anatolia news agency that the conference had a commercial aspect as well as intellectual and academic purposes. He said the event brought together the most prominent experts in the world to talk about the history of the wine business history, the oldest types of local grapes and studies carried out on them.

“Therefore, this conference gathered the most significant people who could talk about Turkey’s geography, history and wide spectrum of grape types. The conference received a great demand, pour capacity was only for 125 people but we had to increase it to 145. We have visitors from Switzerland, Germany and Denmark, while some who could not make it from the U.S asked for video footage of the conference. This really is a very significant global wine event,” he said.

For the next year, he said, they were considering organizing an event that involves gastronomy concepts as well.

‘We produce quality wine’

Taner Öğütoğlu said Turkey’s wine sector was not capable of producing high-quality wine, adding that Turkey could grow 800 different types of grapes. He said Turkish local grapes could achieve great success in global markets. "If we can create a difference, then we can make a huge leap,” he said.

“Currently, Turkey exports around $10 million in wine, but this is a very small amount. Wine is a well-developed sector in the world, and there is a trend of more wine drinking from the traditionally well-consumed beer.”

Öğütoğlu said in emerging markets wine consumption was rapidly increasing, and in countries that have not historically consumed wine, like India and China, it has recently started to be consumed. 

“In addition to markets in which cheap wine is consumed, there are also those that are characterized with a taste for high-quality wine. As Turkey, our priority is the high-quality-wine-consuming markets. Because, although we are the forth biggest grape cultivator in the world, we are still toddlers in terms of wine production,” he said.