Russia’s Wine Industry Struggles with Soviet Inheritance, Post-Soviet Destruction and Sanctions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 18 – Russia is trying to develop its own wine industry, something complicated by the Soviet inheritance, the destruction of the branch by government policy and then economic collapse, and the current wave of Western sanctions, those involved in Russia’s vineyards and wineries say.

            In Soviet times, most wine produced in the USSR wasn’t very good, although there were a few exceptions, or came from non-Russian republics like Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova which are no longer part of the Russian state. Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign and then economic collapse in the 1990s destroyed what little Russia had.

            Over the last decade, Russian vintners with Russian government help have been trying to develop their branch both in the south and especially in Russian-occupied Crimea; but Western sanctions have made it difficult to import equipment and expertise and export wines to the international market (svpressa.ru/economy/article/337536/).

            Russia currently has approximately 200 companies involved in the production of wine – many operate more than one vineyard – but this is a drop in the bucket compared to many foreign countries. Italy, for example, has more than 40,000 wine companies. And producing good wine takes time. Russia is only beginning.

            The centers of the Russian wine industry are in the Kuban, Daghestan, occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, North Ossetia, the Don valley, and the Terek valley. In addition, there are 70 mass producers and amateur operations elsewhere.

            According to Artur Sarkisyan, head of the Russian Sommeliers’ Union, the Russian government has taken the lead in pushing the sector forward, but so far, few Russian vineyards are producing high-quality wine; and that won’t change until consumers demand better, something they will do only when they have something to compare it with.

            In Soviet times, they didn’t and drank Soviet plonk because that was all they knew. In the 1990s, some began to purchase wines from Europe and recognized that domestic production wasn’t that good. Now, however, sanctions against selling wine equipment to Russia and purchasing its wine is recreating the Soviet-era in terms of expectations.

            But Moscow’s concerns about the wine industry involve more than just sanctions. Some experts there fear that grapes from abroad may be genetically modified and thus harm domestic specifies. At present, Russian scholars are engaged in genome mapping of grapes found in Russia (gorod-812.ru/rossiya-perejdet-na-sobstvennoe-vino-importnoe-geneticheski-opasno/).

            So far, Moscow experts have identified and genetically mapped 190 Russian varietals. They have also worked on identifying terroirs, something far easier because of the soil maps Soviet scholars produced in the past. But the process of going from identification of varietals to the production of fine wine is inherently a long one. No one should expect breakthroughs soon.