Turkey
Şirince
Grandmothers sell peach wine on doorsteps where Greek prayers gave way to Turkish ones in 1923.
A grandmother sits on a stone step with a tray of bottles at her feet: peach wine, blackberry wine, melon wine. You taste three for nothing and leave with two. Behind her, a Greek Orthodox village climbs the hillside in stone and tile, its people exchanged in 1923 for Turkish families from Thessaloniki who brought different prayers to the same houses.
Şirince sits eight kilometres into the hills above Selçuk and ancient Ephesus. Its Greek Orthodox inhabitants departed in the 1923 exchange of populations, and families from northern Greece resettled the terraced houses. The old name, Çirkince, meaning ugly, is said to have been chosen to keep outsiders away, and the two 19th-century churches of St John and St Demetrios still stand among the lanes. Today the village presses its harvests into wine, peach to mulberry to pomegranate, sold from doorsteps and cellar tasting boards.
Couple
Wine tasting from doorsteps, garden restaurants with Aegean views and the bittersweet layering of two cultures in one village. Şirince pairs naturally with Ephesus yet lands in a completely different emotional register.
Family
Children enjoy the steep lanes, and the gözleme gardens and fresh fruit juices keep them included while adults taste the wines. Nearby Ephesus makes it a natural second stop on a day of Aegean history.
- The village was originally called Çirkince, meaning ugly, a name legend says was chosen to keep outsiders away.
- Fruit wines are pressed from every local harvest: peach, blackberry, mulberry, melon, even pomegranate.
- The hilltop terraces, eight kilometres above Selçuk, look across the plain where Ephesus once met the sea.
- The 19th-century church of St John the Baptist stands above the lanes, its quiet interior lit by shafts of sun.
Fruit wines from peach to mulberry, poured free at doorstep tastings before you choose your bottle.
Eggplant and potato gözleme, griddled to order in the lane-side garden restaurants.
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