Wine as Crimean hyperbole

Sometimes small private issues expose huge common problems. For example, Ukraine’s wine-producing circles are now rife with all kinds of rumors and mixed feelings about the Crimean part of this industry, which resembles the fermentation of young wart. Like in any wart, bitter tannins and sweet juices are mixed into an uncertain shapeless mass.

Uncertain is a key word here. The officials who represent Ukrainian wine production (its standard-setting documents were drawn up by the Magarach National Institute of Grapes and Wine) in Crimea are silent. Also keep silent owners and managers of the large companies that supply 70 to 90 percent of their products to the Ukrainian market, as do experts in this field, who are separated from Ukraine by the occupational regime. This silence is a sign of deep uncertainty and ambiguity in all aspects of this specific industry which is associated more than any other else with land. In the worldwide system of standards, the origin of a wine is not just a word on the label. It is one of the main quality standards. If the origin is not confirmed, there is no wine as a product.

But the lack of official and professional rhetoric is being made up by exclamations of those whom the annexation gives an opportunity for additional earnings. The folklore and social websites are full of fairy tales about the arrival of Russian ministers who are making the rounds of enterprises and offer the administrations any money to keep the ball rolling, or about the Russian wine market which is as bottomless as an abandoned oil well and into which you can pump all the world’s Cabernet. Middle-caliber entrepreneurs are even toying with the idea that the occupied Crimea is a free economic area of sorts, where everybody can trade with Russia as he or she pleases, all the more so that “Turchynov issues all the Crimean companies a license” to go on working in Ukraine. An industrial epic of today, isn’t it? But what real benefit can Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world reap from this piece of land, so favorable for viticulture?

In the past 15 years, the peninsula’s vineyards have accounted for not more than 30 percent of all the Ukrainian plantations. Official statistics say they occupy 70,000 hectares, which also includes table and technical varieties, homestead lands, etc. The viniculture varieties, especially such internationally acclaimed ones as Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon, and others, account for an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 ha in Crimea, while in Odesa oblast they occupy more than 12,000 ha. This means that the peninsula’s raw material base does not meet the needs of the Ukrainian, let alone Russian, wine and cognac market. Many Crimean companies, such as, say, Inkerman, have been always buying additional wine-making materials in other regions, while all Ukrainian producers import cognac spirits from all over the world. There are neither raw materials nor the laws that encourage grape-growing. In this case, the far-from-the-best experience of Crimea is sending a signal to Ukraine’s entire liquor-producing industry: stop pretending to be winemakers as there are no close ranks of espaliers with heavy clusters of grapes outside your factories. For Crimea to be able to produce high-quality and marketable wines and cognacs, at least 3,000 ha should be grown annually with new grapevines in 10 months. Then it will be an interesting area to deal with.

Crimea’s second problem is wine typology and adherence to world standards. The peninsula produces a considerable number of wines fortified with grain-based rectified spirit. Under international laws, they are adulterated wines, but Russian standards classify them as winy beverages. For them to be exported to Russia, it will be necessary either to bring the law into line with Crimean viniculture or to reform this industry on the peninsula. Yet I admit that the label “Crimean Wine” will not scare off a wino in a place like Magnitogorsk, and this really presents a chance to earn. But it is a pity to spoil a well-known brand. Incidentally, Ukrainian winemakers have always been pointing out this problem, for they know that the grain-based excise-free spirit not only impairs a wine’s consumer properties, but also brings forth black business and black philosophy. For the very idea to take advantage of the annexation, i.e., a public sorrow, for personal enrichment is the work of the devil.

As for the work of de jure Ukrainian but de facto Russian Crimean businesses on the national market, it would be a good idea to be guided by the interest of the national budget. If a company pays all the taxes and duties to the invader, everything is obvious and clear. It will better, for moral and material considerations, to close the Ukrainian market to this kind of businesses. Otherwise, each of us will go on chipping in a fiver for the needs of the Ukrainian army, while millions will continue to be sent to the aggressor. It is also time to decide on Ukrainian bar codes – they must not be assigned to foreign items, which is nothing but cheating the consumer. When the situation stabilizes and Crimea assumes legal status, there will be alternatives. But not yet now.

Let Russian ministers make the rounds of factories, as if they were campaigners for a new government. The very fact of these rounds is not a sign of optimism. Ministers can, of course, give money and even order their subordinates to drink a glass of Crimean wine at lunch. While they have introduced mandatory recreation in Crimean health centers, why not grant the people one more pleasure? But you can’t set things right with injunctions alone. Who and at what expense will plant grapevines in Crimea? Who will own these hectares on the historical homeland of Crimean Tatars and a Ukrainian land under Russian protectorate, where the local authorities follow the orders of occupational commandants? Can viniculture really develop in these conditions? What kind of relationship can Magarach maintain now with the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV)? For the OIV does not cooperate with such regions as Transnistria or South Ossetia, in spite of any success in winemaking. What specialized international exhibition can a Crimean company, now out of touch with Ukraine, go to?

Let us think it over why Russian ministers do not travel to Vologda, where many milk plants have been closed due to the shortage of raw materials, while the rest are switching over to new products which Onishchenko would classify as poison if they were crossing the Ukrainian border. Why do the cold and deserted farms of Vologda not radiate the boundless enthusiasm that pervades the air of Crimea? Why don’t they hear promises to be given everything “just to keep the ball rolling” in a milk-producing area, where the livestock of cows dropped by a third last year alone? What hinders the development of viticulture in Krasnodar Krai which has received billions in investment but plans to achieve 30,000 ha, which is five times fewer than in Moldova now, as late as by 2020? Hearing about these lands flowing with milk and honey in the minister-propagandists’ speeches, you can’t help recalling an old Soviet joke about a traveling lecturer who spoke of animal husbandry in a rural club. When the bespectacled and hat-wearing man said that a cow eats a hectare of grass in a year, the peasant audience objected: “A cow won’t eat a hectare.” The lecture quickly corrected himself – he said it was a hyperbole. So the audience agreed with him: a hyperbole will surely eat a hectare.