Ennio Gugliotta: Yes, I’m from Sicily. I’ve been working in Vinkara for three years. The first time I came was when Mr. Monchiero from Piedmont called me, proposed I come and work here, because I’m also an agronomist so I’m taking care of the vineyard. I came here to see the place and I fell in love with it. So, I decided to come study this new part of the world and the vineyards here. We can say that it’s new, as far as the wine in the world, but for the vineyards we can that this is a very old place for growing grapes.

Vineyards born in Turkey were born in the center of Anatolia, and we are in the center of Anatolia. We are near Ankara, 60 kilometers away. We are in a place called Kalecik. Kalecik is the city behind us. This city gives the name to our most important grape, Kalecik Karasi.

With this grape, we are making six different wines. For us it is very important. We are using it to make white wine, red wine, and rose wine. We have about 135 acres of vineyards. Half is planted with the Kalecik Karasi. The rest of our vineyards is planted with the other indigenous and international grapes.

Yes. We can say that Turkey, the east of Turkey, is the birthplace of grapes. Then they moved down. Grapes went down to Africa, to Egypt, and come back up in Turkey, in the center of Turkey, and from Turkey they went to Greece. From there, to Europe. This is what we find in very important historical articles of viticulture.

Also, we can find very old vineyards grown in all of parts of Anatolia. I think this is the only example in Turkey where the name of the grape is the name of the city. I think this is important. It means that this grape was born here, this kind of grape. We are very proud of this grape. This is our aim, to bring abroad these indigenous grapes, mostly the Kalecik Karasi because we are in Kalecik. 

We prefer to plant indigenous grapes. Also we have an important job, which is to select the best plant in our vineyard. They are taking the buds and we are grafting in the root stalk. We are taking the buds from our best plant to keep its unique characteristics. I think we have a very big job from this point of view.