Bridging eastern Europe and western Asia, Turkiye is one of the world’s oldest wine countries. There are archaeological evidences that wine has been produced in Turkey for well over 7,000 years.

Its long wine history has given Turkey a diverse gene pool of grapes, with more than 600 indigenous varieties. Since the beginning of the 14th century and during most of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey maintained a strong wine trade and was a major exporter to its colonies. However, with the fall of the empire at the end of World War I, Turkey became politically unstable for much of the 20th century, disrupting its wine industry.

It wasn’t until the 1980s, with the liberalization of the Turkish economy, that the industry began to recover and modernize.