Melen Winery

“From the fruit of the vine to the bottle of wine”

Vintage time in the Melen Vineyards

The vintage in Hoşköy starts around the 20^th of August and usually finishes about the 20^th of October, with the busiest time being September.

The vintage means that the year long wait is over and despite all the early mornings and the late nights, exhausting work and continual movement, the atmosphere in both vineyard and cellar is cheerful, no joyful because the yearlong work of planting, pruning, weeding, watching the weather, is over and now with the picking, the grapes can start their transformation into wine.

Melen continues to host vineyard and cellar tours throughout the vintage. A typical schedule for groups who wish to visit Hoşköy and our winery is as follows: The tour begins in our vineyards located between Hoşköy and Güzelköy. In the vineyards are the ruins of a Greek Orthodox Monastery, where a talk is given on the history of the region. This is followed by a few words about the vineyards by the Ayazma, a river or spring considered to be holy by Orthodox Greeks.  Lunch is taken in the same area. After lunch there is a talk on how to taste wine and this is followed by a half hour nature ramble through olive groves and vineyards and the tour finishes in the cellars where Grandfather Çetintaş began production in the 1920s.

Groups who would like to include accommodation in their vintage tour may watch the grape harvest at 5 a.m. if there is a harvest that day, and have breakfast in the vineyard while watching the sunrise. Later, they may watch the arrival and processing of the grapes in the winery at Hoşköy.

Melen Winery started these tours in 2008 and the current format is for groups of not less than ten people

Tour One

13.30-16.30: Monastery tour and wine tasting in the Melen Vineyards, with local cuisine.

16.30-17.30: A nature walk from the monastery to the winery in Hoşköy.

Tour Two

05.00-07.00: Watching the grape harvest in the vineyards.

07.30-08.30: Breakfast in the vineyard.

08.30-09.00: Walk from the Monastery to Hoşköy.

09.30-10.00: Watching the grapes arrive at the winery and the initial processing.

Contact detail: Telephone  0 282 538 6005