Türkiya is not the first country one thinks of when talking about winemaking nations. Handout

My first morning in Turkey I’m woken up by the smell of fresh baked baklava floating in through my hotel window. It’s early, but it sure beats an alarm clock.

While I’m looking forward to visiting the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, wandering through Istanbul’s Spice Market and swimming in the Aegean, I’m also here to get a real taste of Türkiya and I’m determined to find great food experiences wherever they happen to be.

Moments before my first discovery, I’m supine on a marble slab beneath a mountain of bubbles while a tattooed chap in a bath wrap scrubs and scrapes away at me. This routine has gone on for centuries here at the Hurrem Sultan Hamam. Built in the 16th century, it stands on the site of the even more ancient public baths of Zeuxippus that date back to the second century.

Now, as clean as I’ve ever been in my life, I’m given a robe and slippers and led to a large divan in another vast room, this one bisected by a wooden MC Escher-esque staircase. Serene Ottoman classical music plays and a server deposits a silver tray containing tea, a selection of fresh and dried fruit and some Turkish delight at my side.

Turkish delight is one of those things that in theory sounds incredible, but for anyone like me who first experienced it in the form of a Nestle’s Big Turk chocolate bar, the reality left something to be desired. The version presented at Hürrem Sultan Hamamı, mercifully, bears no resemblance to that unfortunate chocolate covered jelly. Riddled with toasted almonds and dusted with powdered sugar, this delight – like a more substantial and texturally interesting marshmallow – lives up to its name.

I’m practically floating from all of the sweet tea and sweets, but it’s time to leave for Cappadocia where the real floating awaits.

Seeing hundreds of hot air balloons filling the morning sky while the sun breaks above the horizon is pretty mind-blowing. Although for me the experience alternates between awe and borderline terror from the realization that I’m 1700 meters above the earth in a wicker basket held aloft by a giant pair of flame throwers that occasionally blast jets of fire into an enormous nylon bag. As exotic as the experience is, I’m relieved when we finally land.

I’m even happier when, a short while later, I’m deposited at a scenic viewing area amidst a blooming lavender patch. Spindles wrapped in burlap and carefully set for breakfast serve as tables. My seat is a hay bale and my view, across a valley into a sky filled with constellations of hot air balloons, is the stuff Instagrammers live for.

No sooner am I seated than the coffee arrives, strong and hot, poured from a painted vessel. There are olives and roasted peppers, fresh cheese, and savory halva. What I love the most, however, are the jams: rose, carrot, quince, banana and apricot. They are easily some of the best jams I’ve ever tasted. “My mother makes them,” Önder Emirmehmetoğlu, the chef of Wish Caravan, the company who catered this incredible breakfast from their on-site mini-house, tells me. I ask if I can buy some, but he insists on giving me a couple of jars to take home.

Another mother will facilitate my next great food experience.

Hot air balloons, carrying tourists, rise into the sky above the 'fairy chimneys' of stone that are so soft that Byzantine Greeks carved subterranean cities out of them, in Cappadocia, central Turkey. Emrah Gurel/The Associated Press

Seven Sages Winery, which opened in 2011, is new to the 7,000 year-old wine making world of Türkiya. Handout

There is no quicker way to establish yourself as a good and decent human, and possible new best friend, than by introducing yourself to a stranger with a bowl of fresh picked strawberries. That’s exactly how I’m greeted by Havva the matriarch of the Duran family and although I don’t speak a word of Turkish beyond, “tesekkurler” (thank you) – which I repeat to her about 20 times – I can tell we’re going to get along famously.

The Duran family runs Cappadocia Home Cooking a restaurant and cooking school from their traditional stone house in the village of Ayvali and much of the produce used comes from their garden. Havva’s son Tolga invites into the kitchen, an arched stone space with a kitchen counter heaving with fresh produce.

We’re making Karniyarik (Turkish ground beef stuffed eggplant). We chop, sauté and season our ingredients and then place the assembled dish in the wood-fired oven. What comes out is tender, almost shriveled eggplant sauced from its own stuffing that, when topped with a dollop of homemade yogurt, elevates the humble nightshade to a delicacy. For dessert there’s cinnamon cookies and excellent coffee. Too soon it’s time to say goodbye. I leave with the promise that I’ll send them a picture of the Karniyarik I’ll make as soon as I get home.

Still full from lunch but with a couple of hours to kill in the town of Urgup, my aimless window shopping is interrupted by the intense aroma of roasting nuts. A young woman standing in front of Doga Kuruyemis, a nut specialist shop, is operating a large roasting machine that slowly turns out bags of freshly roasted hazelnuts. Türkiya, the world’s leading producer of hazelnuts, is responsible for 70 per cent of the global supply and that might explain why these particular roasted filberts are so incredible.

Have you ever seen those videos of colour blind people who get special glasses that allow them to see colour for the first time? That’s what eating these nuts is like. Toasted to the point of pure maillard perfection and expertly seasoned, they are as good, fresh and flavourful a filbert as exists. I buy two big bags, one for immediate snacking and another to take home.

Both get packed in my checked bag for the flight to Kusadasi, so I’m not tempted to polish them all off, but I dig them out to nibble on for the drive that to what turns out to be my next culinary discovery.

Turkey isn’t the first country most people, myself included, think of when it comes to winemaking, but they’ve been making the stuff here for 7,000 years. 7 Sages Winery, opened in 2011, is somewhat newer than that.

A few kilometres from Ephesus in Izmir Province close to the Aegean coast, in a landscape rich with ancient olive trees and iconic pines, I’m seated beneath a pergola on an elevated patio overlooking vines, farmland and rolling foothills.

A server arrives and asks, “What would you like to taste today?” “Everything,” I tell him and with that I’m introduced to my first taste of Turkish wine. Lovely, supple chardonnay, crisp, verdant sauvignon blanc, rich cabernets and muscular merlots, but it’s the local varieties that I’m most enchanted by. The lively and tropical emir with its exotic fruit and sharp acidity could easily become my favorite summertime white. Kalecik karasi, one of Turkey’s premier red grapes, is light and easy drinking and so complex it seems to exist somewhere between Beaujolais and Burgundy.

I somehow manage to find room for a couple of bottles in my now bursting suitcase. I’ve got an early flight back home tomorrow. Sadly, I’ll have to rely on my phone alarm instead of a baklava bakery to wake me up.

The writer travelled as a guest of Exodus Travels as part of their Premium Adventure program, which did not review or approve this article.

Keep up to date with the weekly Sightseer newsletter. Sign up today.

Follow us on Twitter: @tgamtravelOpens in a new window