Paul Goble
Staunton, June 11 – The Russian agricultural ministry’s claim that 58 percent of the wines Russians now buy are domestic is the latest example of “Potemkin village” type fraud, according to journalist Kira Remnoyova of the Versiya news portal. The real figure is far lower and the problems of Russia’s wine industry far greater.
The reasons for that conclusion are readily admitted by those who work in the wine industry. What Moscow is asking people to believe is that Russia has produced more wine even though the harvest from its vineyards has fallen this year because of bad weather and other problems, she says (versia.ru/rossijskoe-vino-ne-sovsem-rossijskoe).
That has led wine producers to import grapes via the gray or black market and then label the wines as being completely Russian even though many of them are produced only with the use of grapes from abroad. That is illegal, but Moscow looks the other way because it is happy to claim a victory in import substitution.
According to the rumor mill in the wine industry, Remnoyova says, much of the wine labelled as being from Russian-occupied Crimea is in fact produced with grapes imported from Kazakhstan which currently aspires to being a major producer of grapes for wines that will be made and sold in other countries.
Moreover, people in the Russian wine industry say that the current federal project to boost grape and wine production by 2030 almost certainly will not be achieved whatever claims the Russian agricultural makes to the contrary, claims that will please Russian propagandists but do little for Russian consumers.
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