Russian wine show to foster revival strategies
annual exhibition and conference to address the challenges of
inadequate raw material supplies that have decimated the Russian
wine industry in recent years, writes Angela Drujinina.
The exhibition, to be held in the heart of the Russian wine region Krasnodar from next year will encompass the entire wine sector from vineyards to retailers.
Its wider remit will see it replace the current international Wine and Beverages exhibition held every April by Exhibition Center KrasnodarEXPO. The existing exhibition this year won international recognition for its high standards with a Medal of the International Union of Exhibitions and Trade Fairs for good organisation.
But the need to stimulate new interest in the Russian wine industry by international suppliers of grapes and wine-making materials has now prompted a change of tack by the exhibition's organisers.
Marieta Emtyl, director of Krasnodar EXPO, told Cee-FoodIndustry.com that "the changing approach to the organisation of the exhibition will draw more attention to the Russian wine industry from domestic and foreign specialists in the grape and wine sector as well as mass media, distributors and consumers. The improvements will also enable the industry to make a first step towards restoration of Russian wine's faded glory."
These days Russian wine producers are reduced to mainly bottling wines instead of actually producing them: a shift that has been dictated by the break-up of the Soviet Union.
In 2001, the domestic Russian grape harvest was estimated at 200,000 tons by the Ministry of Agriculture, with wine production of 18 million decilitres. This was a far cry from the days of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s when annual grape harvests were around 850,000 tons and wine production hit 100 million decilitres with additional raw materials needed from Moldavia, Caucasus and Central Asia.
Today, with the USSR gone, Russia can only supply 20 per cent of the raw materials needed by the domestic wine industry and the remaining 80 per cent are imported from surrounding countries such as Moldavia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia.
These difficulties have not deterred Russian wine producers, who have set up more than 300 - and rising - wine distilleries across the country.
To help raise the profile of this new generation of Russian wines, the new Krasnodar exhibition will in 2005 host a wine contest to International Organisation of Grape and Wine Producers standards, to be judged by a jury of independent experts from Russia and abroad.
Emtyl said that Krasnodar in southern Russia was a logical place for the exhibition as the region where 60 per cent of all Russian grapes are harvested.
