Crimean wines - the third glass to read

Sun in a glass
In our third essay there will be more texture than commentary. We hope readers will understand this correctly. Those who do not need professional details should better put this text aside immediately.
So, table grapes, table and ordinary wines, dessert and vintage, fortified and dry, still and sparkling, port and Madeira, sherry and cognac. This is nothing more than an extremely short wine list to get into the topic.
Since 2020, Russia has adopted a new law “On viticulture and winemaking”, after which measures were taken to tighten and streamline measures in this area of agriculture. Practical changes in this direction are already in full swing in Crimea.
Apparently, the program for the development of the agricultural industry on the peninsula adopted this year will continue to modernize the production capacities and resource base of the Crimean military and military equipment, apparently within the framework of the Program for the Development of Viticulture and Winemaking in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Sevastopol until 2030.
As a result, such gradations of wine-growing regions and grape varieties and brands of wine produced within their boundaries were developed on the peninsula that, of course, it will not be difficult for a professional to understand them, but an ordinary consumer of table grapes and wine will break his head.

Who is who, and what to drink what?
First of all, let’s figure out what table grapes are and where they are grown and planned to be grown in Crimea. These are, first of all, inexpensive local varieties, including those selected in the Ukrainian and modern Russian periods, which are mainly used for food use.
However, among them there are also varieties that can also be grown to “stage” grape mash for the production of cognac alcohol and its subsequent aging in a special container until the cognac stage. These are predominantly unpretentious frost-resistant varieties, suitable for growing in the Steppe Crimea and on yayls with their cold winters.
Of course, the most common table varieties in households of the Steppe and Mountain Crimea, and sometimes in the South Coast and Sevastopol (but there you can see more respectable varieties at dachas and in private houses, and even in the courtyards of apartment buildings), as well as elsewhere in the south, actual canteens and hybrid table-technical ones.
Let us again list without details: Isabella, Moldova, Italy, Arcadia, Codryanka, seedless Husayne (it also has different slang names: for example, in Russia Lady Fingers, in Moldova Tsytsa Kapriy - “goat udder”) and Kishmish. The last two, due to the lack of seeds, have long been used for preparing raisins, and pekmez was also used by careless housewives who were too lazy to filter the juice not only from the cakes, but also from the seeds through finer cheesecloth.
The rest are usually consumed fresh, or they are used to make grape juice or jam. The harvest of table varieties in Crimea accounts for about 9-10% of the total grape harvest on the peninsula as a whole, namely 7,7 thousand tons. The rest, accordingly, falls on wine varieties.
Under the USSR, the share of table varieties was higher; it reached a maximum of 21,1% at the peak of the anti-alcohol campaign due to the cutting down of wine varieties. Currently, the leaders on the peninsula in terms of area occupied by table grape varieties are: Moldova - 17,7%, Muscat Hamburg - 13,2%, Muscat Italy - 12,8%, Muscat Amber - 7,9%, Shabash - 7,8 .6,0%, Early Magaracha – XNUMX%.

The case of technology
Technical varieties, also known as wine varieties, are grown mainly for wine production. They contain more juice, but have a less presentable appearance than table varieties and a shorter shelf life, so they are practically not supplied to the retail chain.
But in the markets in Crimea they can be bought immediately after the end of the grape harvest at wineries, when the security of the vineyards allows anyone to collect the remains of grapes that, for some reason, were not collected by the farm employees. In terms of taste, contrary to popular myth, industrial varieties are often superior to table varieties; they are simply sweeter, which increases the speed and quality of fermentation.
The leaders in terms of area occupied by vineyards in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Sevastopol are Rkatsiteli - 30,3%, Cabernet Sauvignon - 11,9%, Aligote - 11,1%, Riesling - 5,0%, Bastardo Magarachsky - 4,0%, Kokur white – 3,7%.
This distribution in favor of predominantly ordinary, rather than original Crimean vintage varieties of the South Coast (not to mention the autochthonous varieties of the Mountain Crimea and Sudak), is the reason for the fabulous high cost of Crimean vintage wines in Moscow stores. And importing ordinary wines, apparently, is considered unprofitable by both importers and producers, as a result of which the niche is filled with Kuban and Abkhaz wines - there is a business without complexes.
Professionals are asked not to worry
Now let’s get down to the main puzzle for non-professionals, which the new legislative norms contain: the zoning of the viticulture and wine-making terroirs of the peninsula. Some of these innovations have already come into force and are used by winegrowers as technical standards of activity, some have not yet, but they will be gradually introduced within the framework of existing programs.
This phasing is due to the fact that not all terroirs identified in the legislation currently have industrial cultivation of grapes, and in some, grapes are rarely grown even in private households or do not grow anywhere at all at the moment.
Viticultural terroirs include those areas where, by law, grapes were grown in cultivated varietal forms in modern times and bear fruit for at least five years. Obviously, these are the terroirs that were either cleared out under Gorbachev, or where grape cultivation was forgotten either due to the agricultural crisis after Stalin’s deportations, or was curtailed due to unprofitability in Ukrainian times.
Crimea is like Russian Bordeaux
On the peninsula, following the example of the famous French wine-growing region, the following viticultural and wine-growing regions have long been very clearly distinguished:
Eastern upland steppe
1. Panticapaeum terroir (GRZ Kerch, Leninsky district)
Eastern foothill
2. Kafa terroir (Feodosia and suburbs)
Eastern steppe
3. Kirov terroir (district center Kirovskoye)
Mountain-valley
4. Alushta terroir
5. Demerdzhi terroir (southern slope of Demerdzhi-yayla, Big Alushta)
Mountain-valley-seaside
6. terroir Koktebel (Big Feodosia)
7. terroir Kuchuk-Uzen (Malorechenskoye, Bolshaya Alushta)
8. terroir Uskut (Privetnoye, Bolshaya Alushta)
9. Sudak terroir
10. terroir Solnechnaya Dolina (Bolshoi Sudak)
Western upland steppe
11. terroir Tarkhankut (Black Sea region)
Western coastal-steppe
12. Kalamitsky terroir (GRZ Evpatoria, Saki district)
Crimean western coastal foothill
13. Alma terroir (Alma valley on the outskirts of Bakhchisaray)
14. terroir of the Belbek valley section in the Bakhchisarai region
15. terroir of the Kachi valley in the Bakhchisarai region
Crimean Sivash region
16. Arabat terroir (Sivash coast of Leninsky and Kirovsky districts)
17. Karkinitsky terroir (Krasnoperekopsk, Armyansk, Razdolnoye)

Predgorny
18. Ayan terroir (Dobroye, Simferopol district)
19. Bakhchisarai terroir
20. White Rock (Belogorsky district)
21. Solkhat (Old Crimea, Kirovsky district)
Central steppe
22. Salgir terroir (Salgir valley, Simferopol region)
the south coast of Crimea
23. terroir Ai-Danil (Big Yalta)
24. terroir Gurzuf (Greater Yalta)
25. terroir Kastel (Big Alushta)
26. terroir Livadia (Big Yalta)
27. terroir Massandra (Big Yalta)
28. terroir Magarach (Greater Yalta)
29. Partenit terroir (Big Alushta)
Sevastopol
30. terroir Baydar Valley
31. terroir Balaclava
32. Heraclea terroir (Fiolentovskoe and Kamyshovskoe highway area)
33. terroir of the Sevastopol section of the Belbek valley
34. terroir of the Sevastopol section of the Kachi valley
Black River Valley
35. Laspi terroir.
Information