Think of the world’s great wine-producing nations and it’s fairly unlikely that Russia will spring to mind. However, whilst this vast country is better known for its vodka than its white wine, it does in fact have a history of wine production that goes back hundreds of years. Although Russian white wine has been somewhat overlooked by the wine world in the past, savvy white wine buyers are now starting to wake up to the fact that Russia does in fact have some excellent white wines to offer.
The history of Russian white wine is as riddled with drama and political sleight of hand as the history of the country itself and the wine industry of Russia has been subject to some serious ups and downs.
Several areas of Russia by nature lend themselves extremely well to viticulture, with grapes growing wild for thousands of years in the regions surrounding the Azov, Black and Caspian seas. Historians believe that grapes were cultivated and used to produce wines for trade with the Ancient Greeks, particularly on and around the shores of the Black Sea.
Whilst white wine has been produced on an informal basis for thousands of years in Russia, it was not until the 1800s that commercial wine making took off in earnest. The man credited with founding Russia’s commercial wine industry is , who established a factory at his royal estate in Novyi Svet to produce Russia’s first Champagne-style sparkling white wines.
His wines soon found fame for their high quality and in fact a wine from his estate won the Gold Medal for Sparkling Wine at the 1889 Paris Exhibition – one of the biggest events on the wine-making calendar. The success of this Russian white wine was particularly sweet as, just a few years earlier, many of Russia’s vineyards had been severely affected by a devastating epidemic of the phylloxera vine disease.
By 1891 the prince was the proud proprietor of extensive vineyards at Abrau Dyurso, mass-producing what became known throughout the coming century as Soviet Champagne. More affordable than the sparking white wines of the Champagne of France, this ‘Champagne of the People’ was a huge success until 1917, when the Russian Revolution caused the savvy French wine-makers, who had been hugely influential in developing the Russian wine industry, to flee the country. This departure, combined with enormous political instability, had a devastating effect on the country’s wine industry but by 1920 the recovery process had begun in earnest.
Although the Russian wine industry recovered confidence, however, this recovery was to be rather short-lived, with the Soviet era having an overwhelmingly negative effect on Russia’s wine production industry during the 1940s and 1950s.
As part of the Soviet Union, Russia frequently saw its wines bottled under strict government control and many wine makers sought to have there wines bottled elsewhere in order to avoid government restrictions on labelling and pricing. This interruption of the natural fermentation process of course had a negative effect on the quality of the wine itself and the Russian wine industry lost any reputation for quality that it might once have held.
The end of the Soviet era might have been expected to improve the situation, but in fact it would prove to be quite some time before any real improvements were seen. Many of the country’s wine makers had seen their wine making equipment seized during the years of Soviet rule and this lack of vital supplies meant that all too often wine makers were reliant on concentrates and juices imported from abroad. The result was a barely-drinkable concoction that could scarcely be classed as wine.
To add to the country’s wine-producing woes, the fall of the Union and transition from Communist rule to a market economy saw many hectares of prime vineyard used for alternative commercial purposes and by the year 2000 the whole of Russia could boast only 72,000 hectares of actively-cultivated vineyard – less than half the area that was under cultivation just 20 years previously.
However, whilst recovery has been gradual, it has happened nonetheless and word is beginning to spread in the wine world about Russian white wine. With wine-making equipment far more readily available, vineyards are being restored and confidence in the domestic wine industry is growing.
One lasting impact of the Soviet era was the fact that no pesticides or chemicals were available for use during the years of Soviet rule. As a result, Russia has a long standing tradition of chemical free wines that are today considered to be some excellent examples of genuinely organic wines.
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Excellent article. Xorosho!