Explore the Wines of Turkey
Turkey | Grape Escapes from Istanbul
Leaving Turkish wine to one side for a minute, the city of Istanbul is an amazing city to visit and spend time exploring. Layers of different civilisations have left a rich historical legacy, cultural heritage and gastronomic delights. From the capital of Turkey, you can take day trips or spend time away staying on vineyard properties. We highly recommend staying away from Istanbul for two nights in Thrace and taking your time touring and tasting.
Below we detail examples of our two- and three-day Turkey wine tours from Istanbul. As we have mentioned, day trips are possible, but we don’t really recommend them as you spend too much time driving and not enough time at wineries. Plus, you miss out on some lovely winery accommodation options.
Turkey Wine Highlights:
- Private tour, so with the flexibility and comfort to fully enjoy the wines of Turkey.
- Visit four or five wineries over two days – seven or eight wineries over three days
- Tour and taste with the owners, winemakers or agronomists
- Extensive tastings of local and international grapes
- Explore the stunning Dupnisa Caves to stretch your legs
- Learn about the ancient history of the region at the Tekirdag Museum
- Enjoy local gastronomy and taste how it pairs with local wines
- Stay overnight at a lovely winery hotel and fully soak up the atmosphere
If you choose the one-night trip, you will be staying at either Bakucha Winery Hotel or Vino Dessera Winehouse, both of which are absolutely lovely. With two nights away from Istanbul, we will choose a hotel in the small city of Tekirdag for the second night.
Two-Day Overview:
We will pick you up at your Istanbul hotel after breakfast, driving initially on main highways before heading off into the countryside towards the Arcadia Winery. Arcadia Vineyards and the Bakucha Hotel and Spa sit in lovely, green rolling hills, about a 90-minute drive from the metropolis.
At this first stop, you will enjoy an extensive tasting of 6 or 7 wines, accompanied by some local cheese and bread. You will be able to stretch your legs and enjoy the beautiful views while you get to know much more about Thracian wines. After an hour or so at Arcadia, we set off to drive around an hour into a very isolated part of the Thracian countryside. The views on the route are stunning, and the Dupnisa Caves are a real treat. A few minutes before the caves, we can make a stop at a rustic riverside eatery. It’s not the Ritz, but what a setting!
After refuelling, we head to the caves where we will spend 45 minutes walking the beautifully lit caverns, marvelling at the rock formations, stalactites, and stalagmites. Small bats and lizards will probably be spotted along the way, and then we climb the steps to exit the caves into the lush countryside where you will be greeted by an explosion of trees, flowers, and birds.
Note: The route to and from the caves is quite sinuous, so if you have motion sickness, let us know; plus there are quite a number of steps to climb up and down for a full visit of the caves.
After we leave the caves, we will drive an hour or so towards Kirklareli near the Bulgarian border, arriving late afternoon at Vino Dessera. After you check in to your rooms, you will enjoy a glass of wine on the terrace. The next few hours will be spent tasting lots of wine, touring the winery and vines, eating dinner, and chatting with staff and other guests.
We will wake up to great views of the vines, enjoy a hearty breakfast and then head off, driving 90 minutes or so to Barbare near Tekirdag. The Barbare Winery is perched among rolling hills on the Marmara coast, owned by Can Topsakal, who sold his boatyard to buy the lands in the early 2000s. Both Barbare and Vino Dessera benefit from the consultancy of flying winemaker Xavier Vignon, famous for his work in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region.
We will have a tasting here with views over the Sea of Marmara; we save walking the vines and cellars for later in the day at our last stop. At Barbare, we will enjoy the wines with some cheeses, stretch our legs and freshen up. After an hour or so at Barbare, we will drive 20 minutes into the small city of Tekirdag and visit the small archaeological and anthropological museum with its interesting collection of exhibits, including barnacle-encrusted wine amphorae found in sunken ships.
We will spend around 45 minutes looking at exhibits in the museum before grabbing a quick lunch at a local restaurant across the street. After our lunch stop, we head off to our last winery, which is around 30 minutes down the coast, Chateau Nuzun or Sato Nuzun, as it can be spelt locally.
We will be greeted by the owner, Nazan, when we arrive. She is extremely enthusiastic about their project and rightly proud that they have designed and constructed the winery by themselves; coming from an engineering background made that possible. We will have a look around the vines with Nazan, then see a little of the production area and cellars before trying 4 or 5 of their wines.
If today is your last day on our Turkey wine tour, then it’s back to Istanbul for you, being dropped off at your hotel around 7 pm, depending on traffic. If you decided to extend by one more day, then read on!
More Marmara Coast:
After spending the night in Tekirdag at a comfortable hotel, we will head off down the coast shortly after breakfast. Today you will visit three wineries, plus a ruined Monastery among vines, before heading back to Istanbul. The first point of call is found near the town of Sakoy, some 80 km drive from Tekirdag, where a modernist structure perched on a hillside announces the presence of Chateau Kalpak. The winery boasts lovely views from its vantage point above the Sea of Marmara.
This boutique winery produces award-winning wines with a gravity-fed, non-filtered approach while employing plenty of new French oak. The owner is an art lover, as art often adorns not just the above-ground facilities but also the cellars. We will enjoy a look around the vines and winery and then have a tasting to kick-start our wine day.
When we leave Kalpak, we will have a short drive along the Marmara coastal road through some small villages until we arrive at the Kutman winery. We will not tour the winery here, but they have a very interesting wine museum. The owner spent years collecting old machinery and materials to form the museum, which serves as a great space for their wine store today.
After browsing the museum pieces and photos, we will try tasting a few wines here. These guys are not exactly polished in their approach to tasting and will open bottles at random; this is part of the charm and experience. We will try wines made from other fruit also.
Either in this village or the next, we will grab some lunch at a local eatery, most likely with the backdrop of fishing boats. After refuelling, we will head the short distance to the third stop of the day, Melen Winery. Cem, the owner of Melen and the third-generation winemaker in his family, is a bit of a character and very expressive and enthusiastic. Cem will show us his winery, which is still in its original 1920s building and which is home to some lovely old amphorae, covered in barnacles from their time in sunken wrecks.
When we have tried many of the wines that Cem offers, we will get back into the vehicle and head back to Istanbul. The journey back should take around 2 hours, maybe a little more with the traffic, but you may not even notice as people generally nap after all the wine you have consumed.
A great option is to combine Turkey with the ancient Caucasus region. So please check out our Birthplace of Wine tour. Also, you can add ancient sites to your itinerary, such as Ephesus or Troy; it doesn’t have to be all about wine. Turkey has so much to offer!