𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀 (𝟴 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱): "Napa on the Aegean: A Turkish Wine Region Re-emerges"

[EMI P]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/travel/urla-turkey-wine-tourism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sE8.SZG4.x6aMT06iwJ1i&smid=url-share

Visitors enjoying a glass of wine at Urlice.

By Katie Nadworny

Photographs by Bradley Secker

Oct. 8, 2025

It was Juan Pablo’s idea to start a vineyard in Urla.

A native of Chile, he accompanied his future wife, Ceylan Ertorer Diaz Leon, back to the region in her native Turkey when her mother fell ill. There, surrounded by the family’s unkempt vineyards bursting with syrah and Grenache grapes, bewitched by the loamy fields and silvery ancient olive trees, Mr. Diaz Leon was inspired.

From his youth in Chile, he knew about the Spanish Cariñena grapes and French Alicante grapes that were often used for winemaking. What if the couple expanded the vineyards, planted some new grapes and created a winery?

“Urla has a very old history of viticulture,” Mrs. Ertorer Diaz Leon said. “Juan Pablo was interested and enthusiastic about the vineyards and reviving the soul of my mom here.”

In 2018, they created their winery, Hus, now one of the 10 stops on the Urla Vineyard Route.

Ceylan Ertorer Diaz Leon owns and manages Hus, one of the 10 stops on the Urla Vineyard Route.

Urla, in western Turkey, is a short 45-minute drive from Izmir, the closest major city, midway down a peninsula that juts out into the azure Aegean Sea. In the springtime, fields are full of bulbous artichokes, gnarled olive trees, wild lavender and bursts of bright red poppies. Windmills spin languorously in the distance, and the air is heavy with the scent of fresh herbs and pine.

With its dry summers and a soil mix of limestone and clay, Urla is also an ideal place to make wine. But this Turkish Napa is little-known outside the country.

Turkey has the terroir of Tuscany, the wine heritage of neighboring Georgia, a large number of native grape varieties and a history that stretches across empires. Urla in particular bursts with promise: easy access to summer beaches, a well-marked vineyard route, an up-and-coming gastronomy scene. So why isn’t Turkey a better-known wine tourism destination?

“People don’t think to look for wine activities in Turkey,” said Andrea Lemieux, an Istanbul-based wine expert and the author of “The Essential Guide to Turkish Wine.” “It’s a hugely untapped opportunity.”

The vineyards at Urla Winery.

Turkey is among the largest grape producers in the world, with around 1,400 local grape varieties — more than neighboring wine-famous countries like Italy. And through the Ottoman period, Urla was famous for its winemaking traditions. But in 1923, the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey uprooted much of the native Greek-speaking population, and a large number of Turkish speakers from Crete moved in.

The dislocations had major consequences for the winemaking of Urla, explained Can Ortabas, the founder of Urla Winery, another stop on the Urla Vineyard Route, whose family had lived on Crete for 10 generations. “They had to leave their land, they had to leave their homes. Same thing for the Greeks, too.”

Bilge and Reha Ogunlu own and manage Urlice, the oldest vineyard on the Urla Vineyard Route.

The return of renowned wineries to Urla came slowly. One of the first was Urlice, founded by Bilge and Reha Ogunlu. After a brief stint in the United States, the couple returned home to Urla to try to cultivate wine grapes.

“It’s a historical wine region, but the vineyards were abandoned and wine production was discontinued for about 100 years — until we started,” Ms. Ogunlu said. They found a parcel of land with a century-old house in dire condition and set about fixing up the property and planting their vineyard.

As other wineries opened, the couple realized that a wine route would be beneficial for the area — and so the Urla Bag Yolu, or the Urla Vineyard Route, was born. Now there are 10 wineries that are officially part of the route, almost all within a 15-minute driving radius. It is now one of four vineyard routes throughout Turkey.

Ms. Lemieux, the wine expert, described the vineyard route in Urla as “the most well organized and convenient” of the country’s four routes. The roads are well paved, and signs pointing the way to the wineries are positioned at regular intervals throughout the town. Most establishments have someone on hand who speaks English, and some have boutique hotels attached to the vineyards.

Old Urla still feels like a laid-back Aegean village, with the central square shaded by a canopy of knotted jasmine plants and a smattering of tables and chairs where neighbors sit and chat throughout the day. There are shopkeepers and businesses who continue to make up the traditional fabric of any small Anatolian town: locksmiths, clockmakers, teahouses, bakeries shoving fresh loaves of bread through windows to eager locals. Then, turn a corner, and you just might find yourself in front of some of Urla’s Michelin-starred restaurants.

Yunus Ozturk, the sommelier at the Michelin-starred Od Urla, works to elevate the profile of local wines.

There are 10 Michelin-recognized restaurants in Urla, five with Michelin stars. And the growing recognition of Urla’s gastronomy scene has only helped elevate its local wines.

Yunus Ozturk, the sommelier at the Michelin-starred Od Urla, received a special Michelin Sommelier Award this year. He uses his position as the most celebrated sommelier in Urla to elevate the profile of the local wines from the region, just as Od Urla focuses on hyperlocal ingredients in its cuisine; much of the restaurant’s produce comes from the its on-site vegetable gardens, and Osman Sezener, the chef, sources everything else from within a few miles of the kitchen.

The restaurant at Od Urla was recently awarded a Michelin star.

While most of the wine tourists in Urla are Turkish, the rest of the world is nevertheless slowly beginning to discover this sliver of viticultural paradise on the Aegean.

On an evening in the early summer, when the sun slanted golden through the grapevines, two Americans visited Urlice for a wine tasting. One, Ashley Guyton from Tampa, Fla., runs a boutique tour company that usually offers trips in Crete and greater Greece, but her interest in the shared cultural heritage of the former Ottoman lands made her curious to explore more of Turkey.

Ms. Guyton was on a sailing trip along the Turkish coast when the owner of the ship, Tamera Neufeldt, mentioned Urla. Later, back in Tampa, Ms. Guyton visited Turkish restaurant in her neighborhood where she enjoyed a glass of wine that the waitress noted was from Urla. “Wine, cross-culture exploration, boating, beautiful beaches — I had to visit this place,” she said, noting that it’s an unusual destination for Americans.

Cats napping at a port in Urla, which has long been popular as a domestic tour destination.

Despite its promise, Turkey’s potential as a wine tourism destination is being hampered from within by a restrictive law, passed in 2014, that bans all explicit alcohol advertising, including within tourism brochures. (This is why the winery collective is called the Urla Vineyard Route and not the Urla Wine Route.) Also, in December 2023, the Turkish government announced a new set of rules that require alcohol producers to put up a certain amount of collateral based on their production. This upfront payment can be crippling for the small independent wineries that are trying to establish themselves throughout Turkey.

“There’s no trust,” said Ms. Ogunlu, who characterized the requirement as the government assuming that wineries would make mistakes or break the law. “They should be working with us, because it’s a legal industry,” she said, noting that the government gathers significant tax revenue from the businesses.

In a country whose economy has struggled in recent years, a place like Urla has the potential to be a beacon of tourism. The region is only a little more than an hour by car from Ephesus, one of the most popular historical sites in the country, and it’s an easy addition to an Aegean trip for visitors with a car.

“You come here for the complete experience,” said Ms. Lemieux, the wine expert. “We have more history than Europe does as far as winemaking goes,” she said, “but wine tourism in Turkey doesn’t have to be a stand-alone activity.”

A memorial to Juan Pablo Diaz Leon, who founded Hus with his wife, Ceylan Ertorer.

In 2021, Mr. Diaz Leon of Hus Winery died suddenly. He was 34. Only one month before his death, Hus had welcomed visitors to the vineyards for the first time.

Mrs. Ertorer Diaz Leon said she might not have had the will to continue with the project if he’d died before the winery opened. Instead, she felt a need to keep going. “He was excited about doing things that are not done,” she said. “I followed his soul.”

In Mr. Ozturk’s red-wine cellar at Od Urla, the shelves are lined with hundreds of bottles marked with handwritten light-brown labels. The wines of the Urla Vineyard Route are well represented, alongside wines that come from all over the world. At the restaurant, patrons are able to choose wine pairings that highlight either local wines or international wines; more and more, visitors are choosing to enjoy their meal with wine from Urla.

As he moved through his cellar, Mr. Ozturk pulled out a bottle of his favorite local red. It was a 2020 vintage made with Cariñena grapes, from Hus Winery.

The name of the wine is Juan.