“Your skin is the final ingredient of our roses.” AYDIN'S STORY
From a steel factory in Cologne to the Damascene rose fields of Isparta. The story of one family, two generations, and the most patient flower in the world.
January 1971
Cologne. Yusuf Aydın, twenty-three, leaves the village of Ardıçlı for a steel factory near Cologne. He stays thirteen years — six days a week, ten hours a day. Five of his six children are born in Germany during this time.
August 1984
The return. With the savings of those long shifts in Cologne, Yusuf and his wife come back to Ardıçlı on Lake Burdur and take over his parents' farm — cows first, then almonds, table grapes, and a few rows of damask rose.
1986
Roses, in earnest. Two years home, the family begins to plant the Damascene rose at scale. Roses, Yusuf decides quietly, will be the work.
April 1989
The first distillery. Beside the farm Yusuf builds the family's first own distillery — and begins the long habit of carrying small bottles of rose oil, in person, by bus and train and plane, to clients across Europe.
1998
The long road. Without telephone or internet to do the work for him, Yusuf travels — by bus, by train, by plane — carrying small sample bottles of his rose oil to the European houses that will become the family's first long-term clients.
2002
Organic, before it was the question. The first rose petals of certified-organic quality leave the farm — years before the rest of the region begins to ask whether the old way of growing was still the right way.
2006
The conversion. Aydın Gülyağı switches its fields entirely to organic agriculture, abandoning every conventional input — a decision the family makes together, knowing it will cost yields for years before it returns them.
2010
Biodynamic — and a new generation. The first biodynamic compost is turned in Ardıçlı. In the same year, Kenan Aydın acquires the remaining shares of the company and becomes its CEO.
2011
Yeşilova. Twenty hectares of land are bought in the wide, fresh-water valley of Yeşilova at 1,150 m above sea level. Three wells are drilled. The first roses are planted — a deliberate hedge against the late frosts that can ruin a harvest in a single night.
2014
DEMETER. After four years of biodynamic practice — composts turned by hand, preparations buried by season — the farm earns DEMETER certification, the most demanding biodynamic standard in the world.
2026
Renovation. Onward. The renovation of the facility is completed — a thirty-seven-year-old distillery, run by the second generation, still finding new standards to meet. The family is already at work on the next.
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