RussiaWines

Black Sea Gold Coast

(Passport Magazine August 2008)
Text and photos Charles W. Borden
Recently Passport’s Knights of the Vine gathered to gauge the progress of Russian wineries. With a selection that included 28 bottles from the Metro discount cash-and-carry chain and eight more from Château Le Grand Vostock in Krasnodar region, Russia’s only modern winery, and Praskoveya Winery near Budyonnovsk in Stavropol region, preparation for the event reminded me of my first trip to a Russian winery, in September 1992.
On the way to the station to catch the train, my hosts warned me not to say anything. They explained that to save money that had bought me a ticket that was for Russian citizens only – not the more expensive ticket foreigners were required to buy. My train fare cost the equivalent of $1.25.

Ignorant of Russia’s vastness, I was looking forward to a nice train ride that would afford views of the Russian country side. I soon learned the trip to Novorossiysk, Russia’s principal port on the Black Sea, would take 36 hours. The train windows were so dirty that I saw little of the countryside, and the state of the bathroom…well, I shudder at the memory (please email me if you feel you can’t live without the gory details).

Upon arrival, we headed north to Anapa and the Ural Sanitorium, one of many health resorts that stretch along the beautiful beaches of the Black Sea coast. The next day I visited my first Russian winery, Primorsky, and over the next few days, I came to think that the economic opportunities here resembled those of southern California in the early 20th century. Thus began ten years of “experience” with the Russian wine industry. Read more…

Categories Russian Wine Regions, Russian Wineries

Russian French Champagne Shootout

25 Nov

The French Contestants

(Passport Magazine October 2007)
By Charles Borden
This month’s wine tasting, one of our most interesting, started with a comment from John Ortega about a deprecatory Moscow Times article about Soviet ‘Champagnes’. I responded that “the Soviet Shampnskoye” produced throughout Russia is primarily made from imported ‘vino-material’; cheap imported bulk wine that is processed through the ‘reservoir’ method to create a sparkling wine This probably accounts for 99 percent or more of the sparkling wine produced in Russia. However, there are a couple of wineries, like Abrau Durso on the Black Sea, that make at least part of their production from local grapes and locally produced wine according to classic methods.”

A few days later John asked about a wine subject for the October issue. I proposed, “Passport Birthday Party: Sparkling Wines – Classic Russian, Crimean, and a Touch of the Real Thing.” The response, “нет – Russia has a long way to go on sparkling wines, they still don’t have the méthode champenoise system down to a science nor the bulk method charmat and do we want to associate Passport Magazine with poor quality??”

After another exchange, I finally got, “Ok Charles, you win! You pick Russia’s four best Champagnes and I will pick the four best that I can find and we do a Champagne Sparkling Wine tasting out of it! ! Passport’s own Russian French Champagne Shootout!”

The Winner

So we end up at Bistrot, ensconced at one of the coveted big center tables on the patio, and on a Friday night; very hard to accomplish. John has picked up five top Champagnes from DP Trade’s Magnum shop on Kutuzovsky, including his favorite, Salon Blanc de Blancs Brut. I went to the Massandra shop on Komsomolsky Prospekt, which sells a wide selection of wines from “real wineries” of Russia and Ukraine, meaning those around the Black Sea. I picked four of the best from the three wineries in the CIS that still produce sparkling wines according to the classic methods developed in France: Novy Svet on the Crimea peninsula, Abrau-Durso on Russia’s Black Sea coast, and Artyomovsk Winery in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. I had to search further for a bottle from one of my favorite Russian sparkling wines, a red from Tsimlanskoye Winery in eastern Rostov region, but I found one at an AM shop but couldn’t find one of their best, which is apparently made in accordance with an “old Cossack” method. All of the wines, French and Russian, were brut with the exception of the Tsimlanskoye.Read more…

Categories Russian Wineries, Sparkling Wines, Ukrainian Wines

Russian Wine Country

25 Nov

(Passport Magazine October 2006)
Text and photos by Charles W. Borden
Two months have passed since Russia’s wine crisis began, and supermarket Sedmoi Kontinent still has only a handful of wines. The bureaucrats have crippled Russia’s wine industry and it is difficult to understand how they can fix it anytime soon. Despairing over our inability to provide a wine tasting in Moscow, we set off on a tour of Russian Wine Country, just as harvest was about to begin. September and October are the bakhardniy (velvet) season in the south, a beautiful time to take a few days to see one of Russia’s bounteous wine areas, the northern Black Sea coast in the Krasnodar region.

Russia’s principal wine producing area stretches from the port Novorossiysk on the south, through the coastal children’s resort at Anapa, and then north through the Taman Peninsula at the south end of the Azov Sea where wines were produced in Greek settlements over 2,500 years ago. Although there are now approximately 20 wineries in this area, only a few still produce authentic wines from their own grapes. Unfortunately, some wineries import bulk wine or grape concentrate to produce wines labeled as Russian – I have heard of one winery that imports one type of cheap red Spanish plonk to produce 11 different “Russian” wines. Read more…

Categories Russian Wine Regions, Russian Wineries

Country in Crisis

25 Nov

Passport Publisher John Ortega with Preston Haskell

No crisis here!

(Passport Magazine August 2006)
by Charles W. Borden
It’s July 7, seven days after the new Russian alcohol tax stamp regime took effect, and the shelves are bare. With the deadline for the monthly Passport wine tasting just days away, I took a tour of the wine boutiques starting with French deli Hediard, but its wine section was empty and closed. Grand Cru in Novinsky Passage had about 15 different wines and the only whites were three types of Chablis. Kollection Wine on Kutuzovsky was closed as was Kaufmann. The Magnum shop had just three wines. The shelves of the supermarkets such as Sedmoi Kontinent hadvirtually nothing but a few awful Russian wines and restaurant wine lists were down to three or four selections. Russia had entered another crisis, at least for the wine and spirits industry…
For consumers, the first crisis indications became apparent in late June when supermarket shelves began to empty of wine and other spirits and were not restocked. By the end of June, my neighborhood Sedmoi Kontinent had replaced the wines with beer and by June 30, the only wine left was seven bottles of Liebfraumilch and three bottles of expensive Spanish red wine… Read more from Passport Magazine…

Categories Russian Wine Business

Georgia: The Birthplace of Wine

23 Nov

(Passport Magazine March 2006)
by Charles W. Borden
It was only a matter of time before we would get to the wines of Georgia, considered by many to be the best of countries of the USSR. There is some basis for this claim, and not only because Georgia-born Stalin provided the industry with extensive resources. Georgian wines have a royal lineage; it is considered the source of the first cultivated grapevines. Tools of grape and wine production, clay vessels for wine, and art and jewelry depicting grapes and grape leaves found in Georgia have been dated as far back as 5000 BC. The ancient symbol of Christianity in Georgia, which arrived in the fourth century, is a cross woven of grapevines.

Georgian grape varieties are little known in the West. The two most important grapes used in Georgian wines, Rkatsiteli and Saperavi, have the potential to produce excellent, if not great, wines. Rkatsiteli is a white variety that is so widely grown in Eastern and Central Europe that it ranks fourth in the world in hectares grown. Saperavi produces substantial deep red wines that are suitable for extended aging, perhaps up to fifty years. Saperavi has the potential to produce high alcohol levels and is used extensively for blending with other lesser varieties.

Georgia has five main regions of viniculture, the principal area being Kakheti, which produces seventy percent of Georgia’s grapes. Traditionally, Georgian wines carry the name of the source region, district, or village, much like French regional wines such as Bordeaux or Burgundy. As with these French wines, Georgian wines are usually a blend of two or more grapes. For instance, one of the best-known white wines, Tsinandali, is a blend of Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane grapes from the micro regions of Telavi and Kvareli in the Kakheti region. Read more…

Categories Georgian Wines

Russia’s Bordeaux

23 Nov

(Passport Magazine May 2005)
by Charles W. Borden
“I can’t believe this is Russian wine,” was a phrase we heard many times from the Passport wine panel during the tasting of Russian wines from Chateau le Grand Vostock, located in the South of Russia, close to the resort of Anapa.

Wine has been grown in this region of Russia for a very long time; the vineyards around Chateau le Grand Vostock were first planted in the 19th century, when the land was given to General Karsov, in reward for his victory over the Turks at the siege of Kars. Karsov was a wine connoisseur who understood the potential of the land for wine production; it is on the same latitude as Bordeaux, and has a very similar terroir. Read more…

Categories Russian Wineries

Russia’s Wine Regions

22 Nov

The wine grape growing regions of Russia are located in the south between the Black and Caspian Seas. See the following pages for information about the regions where authentic Russian wines are produced:
Krasnodar region
Stavropol region
Rostov region
Daghestan