Our Story

THE REGION OF ÇAL

Our region, formerly known as Mossyna in Ancient Greece and named Çal in the 18th century of Turkey, Çal is a plateau with an altitude of 850 the west of Turkey. With the Büyük Menderes River, which is named after river God Meandros, flowing nearby, the terroir is defined by its distinctive clay-loam and calcareous soil. Although there are some different stories about the source of the name, it is thought that the main source is Çal’s geographical features. In Chagatai Turkish, the word Çal means “high place”. In addition, it also has meanings such as stony place, bare hill, calcareous soil. The main source of income has been viticulture for centuries and perhaps even millennia.

Mythology says; One day, in Nysa in Ancient Greece ( today’s Sultanhisar in Turkey) the God of Wine Dionysus picked the grapes from the vine on the wall of his cave, squeezed the juice, and thus discovered wine. And to celebrate this discovery, he founded the city of Dionysopolis in Çal. He enabled the development of vineyards in Çal and its surroundings. It is also known that the best grapes of the Ancient Greece era were grown above the Büyük Menderes River, that is, in Çal, Baklan, Bekilli and Güney regions. In conclusion, this is the mythological story of Dionysus, the God of Wine, who took the vineyard logs grown here, took them to overseas countries and told them about the wine, and the city he founded in Çal in his name.

Valuable archaeologist and historian Celal Şimşek’s comments about this story are as follows; “It is not in vain that ancient people created this mythology. Because they earned great income from these beautiful grapes and wines grown in the region, and they believed that this was with the help of Dionysus, the god of wine. For this reason, the roots of viticulture and winemaking in the region date back thousands of years. The vineyards grown and the wines produced in this region constituted an important export sector throughout the ancient period.”

The Çal region, which hosts amazing and huge Ancient Greek cities such as Hierapolis, Leodicea, Aphrodisias, Sagalassos and Tripolis in its immediate vicinity, still has many archaeologically undiscovered gems and it maintained its value both historically and geographically for years.

As a family from Çal, our main purpose and motivation in establishing Kuzubağ is to strive to make better wine every year and to strive to make quality wine. Since we are people of the region, we attach great importance to making this huge investment in our own village and giving back to these lands what we have earned from these lands.