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Stavropol Region Wines

Stavropol Region

The northern route of the Silk Road crossed Stavropol region long before it joined Russia’s frontier at the foot of the Caucasus mountains. During the reign of Catherine the Great, Cossacks settled the territory. Tolstoy’s The Cossacks chronicles the region’s conflicts over a century ago with enemies from the nearby Caucasus across the Terek River, which is today’s Chechnya. The book also lauds the region’s wines.

Stavropol is one of Russia’s greatest agricultural regions, and the birthplace of the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, who carries his southern Russia accent even today. Stavropol region is also home to two of Russia’s favorite mountain resorts: Pyatigorsk (five mountains) and neighboring Kislovodsk, with their legendary mineral waters. Each has dozens of sanatoria and numerous tourist attractions.

In contrast with the greener lands of Krasnodar to the west, Stavropol is a vast open land, and dryer and colder than its neighbor. The capital, Stavropol, is about the same latitude as Bismarck, North Dakota, with little more rainfall. The farming season opens as early as March. For winemakers, spring means uncovering the vineyard roots that were buried over to protect them from the bitter cold.

In 1990, the first sister-state relationship between a US state and a Russian region was established between Iowa and Stavropol, prompted by Iowa banker John Chrystal and his friend Mikhail Gorbachev. Chrystal traveled often to the USSR and arranged many professional exchange programs after his uncle, Roswell Garst of the Garst Seed company, hosted Nikita Khruschev’s famous visit to Iowa in 1956. Garst weathered a storm of protests over his sale of high-yield corn seed to the Soviet Union, but Russian farmers today still complain about Khrushchev’s fascination with corn: “for years afterward corn was planted everywhere in the Soviet Union, even in Siberia where it could never germinate.”

Praskoveya - The early days

It was this sister-state relationship that brought me to Praskoveya Winery, near the city of Budyonnovsk in early 1995, and then back in late May that year. There were about twenty wineries in Stavropol region at the end of the Soviet era, mostly producing dry white and sweet wines, but Praskoveya Winery near Budyonnovsk, about 200 kilometers east of the capital is by far the largest and oldest.

Praskoveya Winery - Modern Packaging

Compared to what I had seen at other Russian wineries, I was impressed with Praskoveya’s management, orderliness, and operation despite harsh rural conditions far from the region’s capital. During that visit we made final plans to set up a packaging line at Praskoveya for bag-in-box wines—a dry white wine, and red sweet wine. I was back in Iowa barely a week when the news came of Russia’s first major terrorist incident—in Budyonnovsk, killing 166 and taking more than 1,500 residents hostage in the local hospital. I returned to Praskoveya often until 2000, notably for its 100-year jubilee in 1998 and still follow the winery and its products. Read more in Passport magazine – March 2011

Categories Russian Wine Regions, Russian Wineries

Vinzavod

5 Feb

Vinzavod, literal translation “wine factory,” was the term used in the former Soviet Union and now in Russia for the plant and facilities that manufacture a grape-flavored alcoholic beverage called vino (wine). Many of the Soviet Union’s largest vinzavods were located and continue to operate in the big cities far north of the grape growing areas of southern Russia. Three of the biggest are in Moscow. Another in Moscow has been converted to a trendy modern art district.

Moscow's Old Vinzavod turned Art Center

In Soviet Russia, except in parts of the south, vino production for the masses became a technical process divorced from the messy, fussy, expensive, capital-intensive and weather-dependent nurture and growth of wine grapes. Missing was the romance of “terroir,” the relationship between grape, climate, sun and soil so valued by Old World winemakers for centuries and New World winemakers for generations. Although winemaking thrived along the Black Sea coast in Greek villages 2,500 years ago, Russia’s first wineries opened there only towards the end of the 19th century. The development of the art of winemaking, the winemaker’s link between the vineyard and the process of vinification, was stunted after the Revolution.

Fanagoria Winery - transforming to a modern winery

In the Russian vinzavod of today, vino-material (fermented grape juice) is the principal ingredient. It comes from one or a combination of sources: bulk wine imported by container or grape concentrate shipped by the barrel from countries such as Tunisia, Spain or Chile, or from grapes produced in southern Russia in the regions between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The vineyards of southern Russia do not produce nearly enough grapes to meet domestic consumer demand, and they are neither cost- nor quality-competitive with large western grape producers. Other ingredients of Russian vino could include sugar, alcohol, and essences and aromatics produced in Eastern and Central Europe such as “essence of Riesling.”
Read more in Passport Magazine

Categories Russian Wine Business, Russian Wineries

National Treasure

3 Jan

The sharp pop from a bottle of Shampanskoye echoes across every almost every home, restaurant and park in Russia at midnight on New Year’s eve, followed by a fizzy pour into any handy container. To the chagrin of winemakers from France’s Champagne region, shampanskoye has long been the generic term in Russia for any sparkling wine, whether produced by Champagne’s classic méthode champenoise, or the shortcut reservoir (charmat) method and even simple CO2 gas infusion.

Méthode champenoise (though not the name) is used for premium sparkling wines around the world. Abrau Durso, a 140-year-old Russian winery near the Black Sea, has produced méthode champenoise wines for more than 100 years. Abrau Durso is truly a national treasure, and it has fortunately had a renaissance in recent years. Based upon a recent tasting, the Abrau Durso classic sparkling wines are well worth a try by serious wine consumers.
Russia’s love of sparkling wine

Russian interest in bubbly is dates back centuries. The Cossacks made a sparkling wine in the middle of the 17th century on the Don River in the Tsimlanskoi and Kumshatskoi villages in southern Russia. This wine was even mentioned in Pushkin’s poem, Eugene Onegin. A red sparkling wine is still made according to “old Cossack methods” in this area at Tsimlanskoye Winery. Read more in Passport Magazine

Categories Russian Wineries, Sparkling Wines

New Year Wine Buyer Guide

2 Dec

This time of year I often get asked about wines for a company party, for a unique gift to take home for the holidays, or a Moscow New Year’s present for the boss. Here is my comprehensive 2011 Moscow Holiday Wine Shopper Guide.

The Company Party

When asked about wines for a company party I always respond, “would you feel comfortable serving Russian wines, because there are a number of wines Russian and Ukrainian wines produced near the Black Sea that are completely adequate as party wines and offer good value to price?” If there is hesitation I add that, “you can always fall back on patriotism, and support of local producers, to explain your choice.”

Chateau Le Grand Vostock, with its French winemaker, and new French equipped, top-of-the-line winery, is clearly, by an order of magnitude, Russia’s leader in terms of modern wine production. CGV has pairs of red and white wines at several price levels starting with Terre du Sud at 199r per bottle to Cuvee Karsov at 430r. They have an English language website, stock in Moscow and deliver in case lots.

Two other Russian wineries, Fanagoria and Mysakho, employ an Australian flying winemaker, John Worontschak, and some wines from either winery might make a good selection. Fanagoria has two lines, Cru Lermont and the lower priced NR, which I’ve seen at Auchan and Sedmoi Kontinent. Also, keep in mind that many Russians, though some would be loathe to admit, really prefer sweet wines. Fanagoria makes a very rich, dark sweet herbal wine that is very reasonably priced wine called Chorny Lecker, which you might add to the menu.

You can forget about most Russian sparkling wines, but Abrau Durso on the Russian Black Sea coast, and Novy Svet in Crimea, make sparkling wines in accordance with the classic methods used for Champagne, and Tsimlanskoye Winery in Rostov region makes a sweet, purple sparkling wines “in accordance with an ancient Cossack method.” Read more in Passport magazine…

Categories Russian Wine Business, Wine Shopping

’Tis the Season: Wine Buyer Update

25 Nov

(Passport Magazine December 2009)The past two Passport wine articles covered the Russian and Ukrainian wine industries respectively. Although there is seldom news on Russia’s wine industry to report, during October Jancis Robinson, one of the world’s best known wine experts, visited the Kuban to see several wineries that employ Australian flying winemaker John Worontschak: Fanagoria, Mysakho and the remnants of Sauk Dere. The results of this pioneering visit by a western wine journalist were reported in the Financial Times on October 24 in her article “Russia’s wild world of wine.” Ms. Robinson was able to sample some of Mr. Worontschak’s excellent work with some of the wines from Fanagoria and Myskhako. There is not much left of the Sauk Dere. I visited a few years ago; the remnants, primarily a collection of older wines, were acquired recently by Myskhako.

Ms. Robinson also visited Abrau Durso, Russia’s historic sparkling wine producer on the coast near Novorossisk, but unfortunately in the brief visit did not have a chance to see Chateau Le Grand Vostock, which is clearly by an order of magnitude or two Russia’s leader in terms of modern wine production.

The problem with selecting a Russian wine, as Ms. Robinson pointed out in a later article is “sorting out which wines labeled as Russian are made with some or all Russian-grown grapes and which constitute the 70% or so that contain non- Russian wine imported in bulk.” The industry has been glacially slow to change, but during the past two years there have been several other, young promising developments in the region. Ms. Robinson’s visit brings hope that others will follow to shine some light into a region that surely will have more attention during the run-up to the 2014 Olympics. Read more…

Categories Russian Wine Business, Russian Wineries

Ukrainian Wine Country – Crimea

25 Nov

Prince Lev Golitsyn, patriarch of modern Russian winemaking

(Passport Magazine November 2009)
Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire by the nineteenth century, and later became a founding republic of the Soviet Union. Ukraine has a long coastline along the northern Black Sea and western Azov Sea where vineyards are favored by the moderating influence of the sea and soils that provide excellent conditions for wine grapes.

Ancient Greek settlers planted the first vineyards when they arrived on this Black Sea coast in the seventh century BC. They settled villages on the Taman Peninsula from Anapa and the northern country, and across the straits to the Azov Sea and the Crimean Peninsula near Kerch. The area became a principal trade center for the Bosphorus region and wine was a major commodity. After successive tribal invasions that swept civilization from the area, Italian Venetian and Genoese traders developed the area in the 13th century for the trade route from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. Later the region became part of the Ottoman Empire until incorporated into the Russian empire.

The Crimean Peninsula, which lies between the northern Black Sea and the Azov Sea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 – an event that Russia has come to regret today. Most of Ukraine’s best wineries are located in Crimea. Massandra, Novy Svet, Inkerman, Koktebel and Magarach are the best known. Until recent years, sweet wines were heavily emphasized. Read more…

Categories Ukrainian Wines

Russian Wine Country Update

25 Nov

(Passport Magazine October 2009)
As you open this month’s Passport, the grape harvest is closing in Russia Wine Country, an area that stretches north and northeast of the Black Sea port of Novorossisk to the Azov Sea, where about eighty percent of the country’s wine grapes are produced. The village harvest celebrations should begin by the first or second weekend of October. This is a truly lovely time to visit Anapa and the surrounding region with its one hundred kilometers or so of golden sand dunes and beaches and mild weather. This is the “Velvet Season” and gone are the heat and summer crowds when “an apple could not find a place to fall on the beach”.
True, there are other Russian wine areas: Dagestan, the eastern Stavropol region north of Mineralny Vody, and a couple of locations in the Rostov region to the north. But the sun and land of Anapa, Temruk, Novorossisk and Krimsk districts of the Krasnodar region, approximately the same latitude as Bordeaux and Piedmont, have the potential to make very good if not great wines. This extended wine region stretches across the strait to the Azov Sea at Port Kavkaz along the coast of the Crimean Peninsula. Wine has been produced in this entire area for more than 2,500 years since Greek trading settlements were established near the coast. Anapa was then Gorgipia, and remnants of the old walls are preserved near the city center. Read more…