Winepress - April 2024

Generation Yine

Exploring the terroir of Marlborough

KAT PICKFORD

HAILING FROM hazelnut country in northern Turkey, Selin Civanbay is still pinching herself after arriving in Marlborough for Clos Henri’s 2024 vintage.

The 30-year-old food engineering graduate never dreamed she would wind up following a career in wine. But after an internship at Kavaklidere Winery in Cappadocia, central Turkey, she “fell in love” with wine and set about furthering her studies and work experience in the industry.

“Turkey is a big food producer, including milk, oil, and fruits and vegetables, so the opportunities as a food engineer are huge,” Selin says. “But I felt a bit lost and didn’t know which path to follow.” Having grown up on a hazelnut farm on the outskirts of the small city of Ünye, in Karadeniz Bölgesi/the Black Sea region, Selin felt compelled to do an internship in that industry. But after completing a short stint in a hazelnut factory laboratory, she knew it was not for her and cast around for other sectors that could be of interest. “Even though I didn’t grow up with wine I felt drawn to it,” she says. “The internship was only a small taste – a very short experience – but it touched me and I knew immediately it was what I wanted to do.”

While Turkey is one of the largest producers of grapes in the world, they are largely sold as table grapes, raisins or other products, with very little dedicated towards winemaking. However, with hundreds of indigenous grape varieties, including Öküzgözü, Boğazkere, Kalecik Karasi and Narince, which produce outstanding wines that are little known around the world, the potential for Turkish wine could be huge, Selin says.

While she may return to Turkey one day to see that happen, once deciding to make wine a career, Selin decided the best place to study and work was the birthplace of the world’s most popular grapes – France. She made her way to Bordeaux to first learn French and then apply for a two-year master’s programme in wine and vineyard science at the Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin.

While studying she worked at a number of wineries in Bordeaux, Languedoc and Sancerre and found she was most interested in wine production. “I worked in a range of areas from lab analysis to production, and discovered I enjoyed the hands-on work in the winery, seeing the evolution of grapes to wine and learning all about the winemaking process.”

While in Sancerre she worked for Domaine Famille Bourgeois, a 10th generation wine family. At the interview she was asked if she would be interested in travelling to Marlborough to work at its (much younger) sister winery, Clos Henri. “Of course I said yes,” she says. “What an opportunity – to travel to such a beautiful place and, of course, discover one of the famous new world wine regions. But there is almost nowhere further from Turkey than New Zealand, so I didn’t believe it would really happen.”

Since arriving in Marlborough, she has enjoyed experiencing the difference between the new and old worlds of wine and their contrasting expressions of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. “While you are comparing basically the same varieties, you can really see and taste the different expressions of terroir… it really is something amazing.”