Ukraine is a large country in Eastern Europe (the second largest on the European continent, after Russia) bordering Poland to the west, Russia to the east and the Black Sea to the South.
By 2014, the Ukrainian wine industry had become a major player in Eastern Europe. But that year, Crimea came under the control of Russia. There are several small wine regions in the country, which contribute to the production.
However, Crimea was (is) by far the largest, with the best conditions.
Two famous wineries from the Tsarist era, Massandra and Noviy Svet, were seized in 2014, nationalized by Russia, and then heavily subsidized. Overall, wine producers gained easier access to the Russian market, but have since faced export bans to other countries due to sanctions against Russia.
Crimea has a Long history of wine production, and during the Soviet era it was a Center of mass wine production distributed throughout the USSR.
However, the total area of vineyards was cut in half as Part of Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign against Alcohol abuse.
There are going to be some utterly splendid wines to taste at our New York Fine Wine Encounter – many of the world’s grandest winemakers have brought some of their very best bottles to our event, knowing their hard work and talent will be appreciated by a discerning audience. My team of experts have picked out a great selection of their personal favourites from the wines on offer, and for their superbly detailed analysis and opinion, you should read the pieces and the picks from Georgie Hindle, ...
It was the 5th of March and the second week of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. That morning, Mykhailo and Georgiy Molchanov, the father and son team of the Slivino winery in the Mykolaiv Oblast in Southern Ukraine went out to prune their vineyard. Lodged in one row of the vines was an unexploded Russian missile from a ‘Grad’ launcher. Meaning ‘hail’ in Russian, the name refers to the BM-21 systems that indiscriminately launch up to 20 of these missiles at once, something that has become a ...
I’d visited Kakheti, Kartli and Imereti before – Georgia’s dominant central wine-producing zones; but never the wild exterior. From the ice-crisped cemetery grass of the 11th-century church of St George, dominating the mountaintop village of Mravaldzali, we looked north across the mountains of the Greater Caucasus, Europe’s highest. The silence, and the vista, was daunting. Hundreds of dry, drab valleys lost themselves in as many snowy peaks. Russia lay beyond. There was, apparently, a way over: ...
