A gentleman of grapes

Aylin Öney Tan

We were driving toward the vineyards. Suddenly, he pulled over and looked up at the sky. A plane was taking off. He watched the plane for a while. He seemed to be flying away with the plane. He was surely seeing something beyond a plane simply taking off. Perhaps it was an imagined destination or himself dressed handsomely in the cockpit. As the plane almost disappeared in the sky, he murmured dreamily: “I always dreamed of becoming a pilot when I was young.”

This is one of the most vivid memories of Orhan Ziya Diren, who passed away last week — a memory that stayed with me. The vineyard bearing the family name was in Tokat, a town in the mid-Black Sea region of Türkiye. He could have owned that plane or even a fleet of them. He could travel wherever he wished. In fact, he traveled a lot, representing Türkiye as a Member of Parliament in international organizations. But his childhood dream of becoming a pilot and flying across the globe remained just that — an unfulfilled dream.

Visionary father

The story begins with his father Vasfi Diren, a true visionary and a hardworking man. Having studied at the once-legendary Bursa Agricultural School, he fully understood the importance of fruits and, of course, grapes. Tokat is like a fruit basket, famed also for its vineyards. He wanted to invest in his hometown and started to produce wine in a makeshift pool/tank in the basement of their house. With no means to bottle the wine, he opened a drinking hole, a ‘meyhane,’ to sell the homemade wine by the glass. The name of the place was “Dört Nal,” meaning “Four Horseshoes,” and from that tiny drinking hole, the company he founded constantly went uphill at a full gallop. Eventually, he also started bottling the wine by collecting used bottles and introduced his first white wine brand, Diren.

Vasfi Diren always had ideas to progress, and he was determined to make them happen. From the very beginning, he saw that there could be a market for fruit juice production. Those were the days when bottled fruit juice was unheard of. In 1963, he presented his plans to the Ministry of Agriculture. They referred him to the German Embassy, and together they organized a one-month technical study tour in Germany. Upon his return, he shifted his focus to fruit juice production while continuing with wine.

Here comes the critical part of the story. Vasfi Diren had eight children. He decided to send one son, Ali Rıza Diren, to study fruit juice in Wiesbaden. His other son, Orhan Diren, was destined to go to France to learn everything about wine and vineyards. It was not a plane that brought him to France. He took off on a train from Sirkeci station in Istanbul with a wheel of cheese, a huge loaf of country bread and very little pocket money. The journey took three days to reach Paris and then Dijon. He graduated from the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the Faculty of Science at the University of Dijon in France and became a wine engineer. This visionary attempt to have his heirs educated in fruit juice and wine resulted in the Dimes (fruit juice) and Diren (wine) brands. However, while that train voyage might have been his destiny to become a wine expert, it surely was far from fulfilling his dream of becoming a globetrotting pilot.

Protector of Narince

Orhan Diren served as an MP for Tokat for two consecutive terms. He was also a member of the Turkish Group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE PA). Actually, that is how I met him initially — not because I’m a food writer, but because my former husband was also in the group. It was a pleasure meeting with him during the assembly visits to Vienna and Paris and letting him choose the wine when we dined out. A true gentleman of grapes, he was always curious to explore, a perfect dinner companion. He was also a defender of Narince grapes, the iconic indigenous white grape of Tokat. Narince means gentle or delicate-ish, famed for its ultra-delicate, thin-skinned variety, which is also famous for its leaves used in making “dolma,” wrapped vine leaves. His legacy will always be remembered for his efforts to sustain the grape. Every year, he used to distribute vine stocks to peasants for free and give consultancy on how to tend vineyards.

Today, Narince is one of the leading white wine grapes of Türkiye, occupying a central position among indigenous Turkish white grapes. It is often cited as the country’s most versatile native white variety. A note to remember: The first-ever Dörtnal bottle produced by the father was made of Narince grapes, so his son Orhan Diren made it his mission to sustain the grape. Now, his only son, Ozan Diren, the CEO of the Dimes Group and president of TÜSİAD, will carry the flag forward while waving farewell to his father as he flies away to the skies, perhaps finally fulfilling his childhood dream.