Assyria: We Are Wine and History
- Andrea Lemieux
- Jun 30
- 7 min read
One of our very first stories was a brief Turkish Wine History 101 piece. It was difficult to condense some 8,000 years into a few paragraphs! Now we're taking a deeper dive into one of the most influential to wine development cultures: the Assyrians.
In southeastern Turkey, among the monasteries, stone villages, and vineyards, a small community continues a winemaking tradition that reaches back thousands of years. The Assyrians were among the great civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, and wine occupied an important place in their religious life, economy, and culture.
Though their empire disappeared long ago, their connection to wine endures, preserved today by Assyrian families and wineries that see themselves as custodians of a living heritage.
The Assyrian Empire
The Assyrians emerged in northern Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age and, over the course of almost three millennia, built one of the most powerful empires of the ancient world.
When people talk about Assyria, most are referring to the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609 BC), which one could call their Golden Age. During this time, Assyria was the dominant power in the ancient Near East with the strongest military in the world, and the largest empire in history. Their empire covered a vast territory, including Cyprus to the west, southeastern Turkey, parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt to the east, and the Caucasus Mountain areas of Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan to the northeast.
In addition to being a great military power, the Assyrians were talented artists (particularly sculpture and jewelry making), astronomers, and were believed to use technology like telescopes and magnifying glasses.
They were also great lovers of wine.
Their propensity for prolific record keeping has allowed scholars to learn a great deal about Assyrian society. Early 20th century excavations of a mound, Kültepe, near Turkey’s Kayseri unearthed a cache of some twenty-five thousand clay tablets. These described the businesses and activities of a trading post, called Kanesh, that stood on Kültepe, as well as the personal lives of the people who lived there.
Other Assyrian records have detailed their consumption and production of wine and the great importance it played in their empire.
Assyrians and Wine
Assyrians were renowned for their vines and wines and extended plantings wherever they conquered. In his research into ancient wine, Dr. Patrick McGovern, eminent molecular biologist and expert on ancient beverages and foods, revealed that they had an “...ambitious program of vine cultivation across their lands. The “Assyrian Doomsday Book” records tens of thousand of vines being planted…”(1)
Lucky for them, the heart of their empire sat in the Fertile Crescent, the semicircular (thus its name) area that spanned from southern Palestine to Anatolia’s Taurus Mountains in the south and the Zagros range in southeastern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.
Rolling hills and plains, crossed by the Tigris River made up the geography of the Fertile Crescent. Back when it was fertile (it’s kind of a desert now), the area received plenty of rainfall, making it ideal for all manner of agriculture. Archeological and genetic evidence places the origin of one of the many wild vine varieties–perhaps vitis vinifera–here. Further evidence indicates that some of the oldest cultured/domesticated vitis vinifera seedlings originated in the Turabdın region of northern Mesopotamia (now southeast Turkey).
Wine was a huge part of Assyrian religious rites and economy, as well as a major beverage used for feasting (often in celebration of winning a battle), and regular, personal consumption. While the king was free to imbibe as much as he wanted, laws around wine strictly governed rations for everyone else, with different measures afforded to everyone from the queen on down to the lowliest of slaves.
Wine was so valued that, according to Dr. McGovern, eminent molecular biologist and expert on ancient beverages and foods, vineyard land cost more than forty times that of any other agricultural land during this period. Moreover, legal penalties could be levied against people for “human stupidity” such as trampling vines.
“...this was one of the most stupendous ‘wine cultures’ of all time…”(2)
Assyrians produced both red and white wines which they categorized as sweet, good, aged, and strong. Many of their wines contained additives, like the Greeks would later do, grape concentrate, wheat, barley malt, likely spices, honey, etc.
Winemaking for them would look nothing like the slick, modern techniques of today. Typically, after harvesting grapes, bunches would be laid out on something like burlap sacking to dry for a short time under the sun, concentrating sugars to ensure wines with higher levels of alcohol and sweetness. They would then gather the sacking and foot stomp the grapes, squeezing juice out of the material, and leave it to ferment naturally outdoors.
Assyrians in Turkey Today
Many ancient cultures, especially those like the Hittites, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Phrygians, etc. who lost their countries have long since disappeared. So it may surprise some to learn that Assyrians are very much alive still today.
After the great Battle of Nineveh, the last Assyrian ruler made one more attempt to rally at Harran (southeast Turkey) but was defeated in 609 BC, marking the end of thousands of years of Assyria as a state. Yet, their people and culture lived on. Ancient Assyrian cities were systematically sacked, scattering the people. Many of them made their way to the districts of Mardin-Midyat, Hakkari, and Şırnak in Turkey’s southeast.
Assyrians of old shared a pantheon of Gods with the Babylonians, but were gradually Christianized around the 1st century AD. Winemaking continued during this period, with much of the production shifting into the many monasteries that sprang up in the region.
Thereafter, Assyrian identity maintained a certain continuity, with a distinct culture that persevered under various empires and warring factions, from the Persians, Romans and Greeks, to the Arabs and Ottomans. As the age of empires reached its end amid the vast turmoil of World War I, many Assyrians dispersed and fled the region. Today, the majority of Assyrians in Turkey live in Istanbul or other large cities with only about 3,000 Assyrians remaining in villages around Mardin-Midyat and Şırnak. However small their community, their culture and winemaking traditions live on.
Here in the extreme southeast of Turkey, at the conjunction of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, pockets of Assyrian communities continue to make wine at home. They gather grapes from gardens in homes and monasteries to produce simple field blends.
Mardin is now a significant tourist destination in Turkey’s southeast, drawing visitors both domestic and international to the few surviving monasteries, such as Mor Gabriel and Mor Hananyo, the ancient city of Dara, Mardin’s famous silversmith shops, and the many small churches of Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Chaldean, Catholic, Armenian, and other Christian extractions.
This rise in tourism has also breathed new life into the local wine industry. While most production is still small, there are two commercial Assyrian wineries that sell wine throughout Turkey and abroad.
Modern Assyrian Wine
While pressure from neighboring conservative communities has long kept the Assyrian’s winemaking a furtive activity, two commercial wineries in southeast Anatolia are working to change that.
In 2008, wishing to share this part of their culture outside the community, members of three Assyrian families: Gabriel, Aktaş, and Aslan, created the first commercial winery to produce Assyrian wine, Shulih. Taking its name from the Syriac word for “peace,” Shiluh continues the tradition of its Mesopotamian antecedents. ”We are wine and history,” they say.
Shiluh sources regional grapes Öküzgözü and Boğazkere from Diyarbakır, and local Karkuş (aka Kerküş) and Mazrona from private vineyards around Mardin and Midyat. This was the first winery to work with Karkuş or Mazrona, two rare white grapes that grow only in this area.
The very names of Shiluh’s wines evoke Assyrian culture and history with names like Manastır (monastery), Turabdın (derived from Tur Abdın, 'Mountain of the Servants [of God]', a region of great importance to the Syriac Orthodox Christians), Ninve (from Nineveh, an ancient Assyrian city), and Dara (ancient Mesopotamian city).
Around 2020, a second Assyrian winery emerged. Forty-five kilometers east of Midyat lies Midin Şarapçılık, Turkey’s easternmost winery. Midin is more than a winery, though, it’s a social and agricultural preservation project.
Many of the families here have had small vineyard plots for generations. While the area looks nothing like Burgundy, the vineyards function in a similar way, in that, so many generations have passed that one family or person might own a single row of vines within the larger vineyard. As a visitor, you only see the vines spread out before you, not the scores of people who each have a stake in the vineyard. You also have no idea which grapes you might be looking at as the many regional grapes flourish side by side here.
Villagers use the vines, surrounded by fields of watermelons, for table grapes, molasses, and home wine production. But grapes are difficult and expensive to maintain. Even those who tried to sell them in markets only got pennies per kilo.
Vines lay neglected and were at risk of being uprooted for more profitable crops. Horrified that Turkey might lose this piece of viticultural heritage, Marküs Ürek stepped in with Midin Şarapçılık. By buying grapes from the villagers, he ensured a fair and steady revenue stream for them.
The loss of any vineyard is sad, but losing these vines would have been abjectly tragic. Öğündükköyü’s vineyards are full of rare, regional grapes grown nowhere else. In addition to Karkuş and Mazrona, vineyards here have Bilbizeki, Gavdoni, Midin Karası, Kittil Nafs, Mazrona Komo, Msabık, and Raşe Gurnık.
No one remembers who planted many of these vineyards. Vines range from 60 to 150 years in age and grow untrained and naturally as bushes. Some are so old they have trunks so large that one cannot span them with both hands and have reached heights over 6 feet tall.
The Assyrian Empire may be lost and its people much diminished and scattered. Both through Shiluh and Midin, we can still taste a glimpse of its history.
Andrea Lemieux is an international wine expert with particular expertise in Turkish Wine. She is the author of The Essential Guide to Turkish Wine, the world's only comprehensive English language book on Turkish wine. She is also the author of The Quick and Dirty Guide to Greek Wine and the founder of The Quirky Cork website which is dedicated largely to Turkish wine.
1. Patrick E. McGovern Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003) pg 189. Kindle edition 2. Patrick E. McGovern Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003) pg 174. Kindle edition.
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