Crimean wines - the third glass to read

44
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.
44 comments
Information
Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.
  1. +3
    6 July 2024 06: 34
    It is important to note the taste preferences of consumers. The data is not based on statistics, but based on communication with a store salesperson at a well-known winery in Crimea.
    If before 2014 preference was given to fortified wines, then after dry ones. And as she said, the plant now produces 70% of dry products.
    I tried Crimean grappa - a very good drink.
    1. -3
      6 July 2024 07: 06
      Several years ago I bought some chacha from Auchan, made in Sevastopol. One sea lion. I didn't experiment anymore. The best chacha is Kizlyarka. Last but not least - Phanagoria.

      For a long time I took Inkerman wines. Particularly Pinot. There was good wine. The last time I bought two bottles of Pinot at Megamarket. Vinegar. A completely different wine! Possibly scorched.

      For myself, I concluded that in the region of 300-400 rubles there is nothing better than Georgian, South American and African wines in our stores.
      1. -2
        6 July 2024 08: 38
        Good morning . The morning started with an alcoholic article))))). Something immediately came to mind: Whoever goes to visit in the morning acts wisely, then a hundred grams here, then a hundred grams there, that’s why it’s morning. I'm not a wine connoisseur; I prefer good cognac. But I have one friend who makes moonshine; it can’t be distinguished from good cognac. He didn’t tell me the secret of production, although I will never be his competitor. And the quality of wine depends on the year, weather conditions give different taste to wine. That's why they always write the year of production on the bottle.
      2. +4
        6 July 2024 16: 32
        Quote: Stas157
        Several years ago I bought some chacha from Auchan, made in Sevastopol. One sea lion

        Chacha is a classic distillate! This means that all the tail fractions (smelly fusel) during distillation go into the selection, and not into the sewer. The same can be said about cognac, but only cognac is made from pure grapes and aged in barrels, which significantly ennobles the existing fusel and does not push it to the fore...
      3. +1
        7 July 2024 09: 16
        You would buy even cheaper fusel milk on the market under the counter, and then say how bad the quality is.
        Wines must be purchased either in specialized stores (not in chain alcohol stores) or directly from the manufacturer.
        Yes, it depends on the year. I remember taking "Marble Valley". With Bakhchisarai peaches - divine! But the next year it was no longer the same.
        As for Georgian wines, I once went into a liquor store with a Georgian I knew. He couldn't find a single familiar producer there. We bought some for about 900 rubles, so-so. The Georgian refused to drink it at all. Then he brought a real local Georgian wine as a gift for a sample - heaven and earth!
        1. +2
          7 July 2024 18: 24
          Your Georgian is not really Georgian, or has never seen wine.... off the top of my head I'll say TABLA wine is available in Georgia and we also have it.... Your "Georgian" is apparently a specialist in minassali
      4. 0
        12 July 2024 12: 48
        Quote: Stas157
        For myself, I concluded that in the region of 300-400 rubles there is nothing better than Georgian, South American and African wines in our stores.

        WINE cannot cost less than 1000 rubles if it is wine.
        1. 0
          26 July 2024 08: 22
          Quote: APASUS
          WINE cannot cost less than 1000 rubles if it is wine.

          It would seem that a lie cannot be so blatant, but here it is)) Spanish wines, together with the previous excise tax and transportation costs, cost 500-600 rubles, and were quite good. And many other countries supply good wines for much lower prices. Now the price has risen, but this is not the price of wine...
          1. 0
            26 July 2024 08: 30
            Quote: Mikhail3
            It would seem that a lie cannot be so blatant, but here it is))

            I don't get into pricing, I'm telling you what there is. Wines made from manure for 200 rubles, there's plenty of them in stores. Be careful.
            1. 0
              26 July 2024 08: 32
              Do you mean “I don’t climb”?! Indicated the price, but not in the pricing?) Either pull up your panties, or take off the cross already.
              1. 0
                26 July 2024 08: 37
                Quote: Mikhail3
                Do you mean “I don’t climb”?! Indicated the price, but not in the pricing?

                There are a lot of taxes and excise taxes, transport, containers, packaging and a bunch of everything. So what is this wine made from for 500 rubles, which is all the way from Spain? If the excise tax price can be viewed on the tax website
                Can you at least estimate the price of grapes?
                1. 0
                  26 July 2024 08: 42
                  Is this about pricing or not? Otherwise, I somehow won’t understand the twists and turns of your brilliant argument)) And yes, you can estimate. Then it turns out that all wine produced in Russia should cost no more than 200 rubles per bottle. All other costs are bribes and completely unreasonable markups. Well, naturally, the technology for producing such wine should be modern, not cave-like.
                  And foreign wine should cost 500-600 rubles. Because of taxes and excise duties. But first, our wine will be "taxed" in the form of colossal bribes to the government, and then...
                  1. 0
                    26 July 2024 09: 12
                    Quote: Mikhail3
                    Is this about pricing or not? Otherwise, I somehow won’t understand the twists and turns of your brilliant argument))

                    What arguments do you need? If it is not Beaujolais (I hope you are familiar with this term), then the price in Spain is about 5-7 Euro. But there is no initial data here. What batch is being bought and under what conditions. And then only
                    + transport, from 1600 Euro per container delivery to Moscow
                    + customs payments (this is actually a conversation on 1000 pages of code)
                    + profit
                    +
                    +
                    So, in the end, if you bought wine from grapes, and not distillation of pomace, the wine will cost around 1000.
                    Wine cannot be produced for 200 rubles even in Russia
                    1. 0
                      26 July 2024 14: 55
                      I need a logical argument. So that each next sentence does not refute the previous one, like yours. They started talking about money, they immediately denied that it wasn’t about money, they started talking about money again)
                      The railway container holds 22176 bottles of vino. If you bottle it in Russia, it will be cheaper, but even so it turns out to be 7 rubles a bottle) God, what a horror... And what is a hundred pages would also cost 20-25 rubles) Well, until the government raised the excise tax to the skies, for the protection of his shmurdyak, who has nothing to do with wines.
                      1. 0
                        26 July 2024 15: 01
                        Quote: Mikhail3
                        So that each next sentence does not refute the previous one, like yours.

                        So you need a price tag. I immediately wrote that I don’t get involved in pricing. There are a lot of parameters that affect the price of the final product and normal wholesale wine will cost the same 600 rubles locally in Spain, but not like in a store in Russia. Your logic suffers too
      5. 0
        26 July 2024 08: 19
        Quote: Stas157
        Several years ago I bought some chacha from Auchan, made in Sevastopol. One sea lion.

        Maybe someone has “sun in a glass”, but in general there is everything in a Crimean “glass”. When the Russian market opened completely to Crimea, it turned out that there were no wines for all orders in Crimea. And there is no chacha either) There is nothing, the volume of natural product produced in Crimea is ridiculous.
        Well, we started mixing invite with alcohol in barrels, as they have been doing for many years for our resort bottlings. There is no natural wine to be found. This disgusting thing is everywhere. Wine flavored, yeah. Since the consumer quickly realized that the current “Crimean wines” are much inferior in quality to honest donkey urine, the huge speculative income of the Crimean “winemakers” came crashing down. In response to this, the government, of course, raised excise taxes on foreign wines. Looks like they can get a good handle on the alcoholic invite...
    2. -2
      6 July 2024 09: 16
      Now the plant produces 70% of dry products.
      I tried Crimean grappa - a very good drink.

      You have been misled - grappa is not dry wine (just kidding) :))
      Crimean dry ones are usually of low quality and are much inferior to Georgian ones, for example.
      1. 0
        6 July 2024 10: 19
        Crimean dry wines - wines of the Sun Valley. wink
      2. 0
        7 July 2024 18: 37
        dry Georgian wines are hard to beat... Georgians don’t know how to make dry wine, no matter how they made minassali it turns out
        1. -1
          7 July 2024 20: 03
          just dry ones are quite normal Georgian ones.
      3. 0
        9 July 2024 14: 27
        Not much good Georgian wine reaches our market. Firstly, it is the national drink there, plus tourists. Unfortunately, the average consumer will not be able to easily choose Georgian wine. Grape varieties do not guarantee anything; you can buy nothing for 900 rubles, or you can get something delicious for 600 rubles. Plus there are also fakes, although there are fewer of them. There are many distilleries in Georgia and the quality varies. In order to navigate correctly, you need to read industry reviews with ratings, this is a good help. It’s easier for Russian manufacturers - for example, if you take Galitsky and Galitsky, the quality is guaranteed. But the truth is that the price tag will be higher. In general, the path that our winemaking has traveled over the past 20 years is simply cosmic. Georgians are also fine, but, again, you need to know the producers and varieties.
  2. +2
    6 July 2024 06: 45
    technical varieties are often superior to table varieties, they are simply sweeter, which increases the speed and quality of fermentation

    The speed of fermentation, as well as its quality, does not increase. Increases the alcohol content of the drink...
    1. +1
      6 July 2024 09: 11
      In most cases, you are right, but there are exceptions when grapes are artificially made sweeter using special technologies - tokay or ice wine, for example.
  3. +6
    6 July 2024 07: 47
    The wines from the MASSANDRA production and agricultural association are very good.
    1. +4
      6 July 2024 08: 56
      Quality and taste are different categories. The quality of Massandra is not bad, but Solnechnaya Dolina is much higher. Inkerman's ports are excellent. Koktebel Madeira is very worthy. In general, Crimea has always specialized in fortified wines (port, Madeira, sherry, dessert). Now the production of dry food has sharply increased, unfortunately, at the expense of quality. The New World stands out separately, with its magnificent champagne, but again, everyone has their own taste.
      1. +5
        6 July 2024 20: 53
        I completely agree, fortified wines of Crimea are almost all good, especially Massandra sherry and Sunny Valley.
        1. +2
          10 July 2024 12: 50
          In 78, while in Yevpatoria, I “met” the “Surozh” port wine - in the evening, in the officers’ mess, we had a glass. The memory of the divine drink remains!
    2. 0
      9 July 2024 14: 37
      Massandra uses alcohol at random. Cheap 200%. But you need to add alcohol strictly at a certain moment, on the eve of stopping fermentation and then into the barrel. That's why I don't buy cheap Massandra. Wine diluted with alcohol. The present is a different matter, but where are the guarantees? That the technology has endured...
  4. -11
    6 July 2024 09: 05
    There is practically no real dry wine on the market. This applies to all suppliers, including importers. Reasons:
    -refusal of Soviet GOSTs - now any shmurdyak can be passed off as dry wine;
    - destruction of the scientific and technical base of winemaking - in the USSR they even produced special tractors;
    -destruction of the winemaking resource base in all republics of the former USSR, especially in Central Asia.
    -refusal from centralized purchases of quality wine varieties in the CMEA countries - Bulgaria and Hungary.
    In general, the conclusion is the following - the population of a raw materials colony will not understand that they simply cannot pay for quality food and drinks. That is why they are not on sale. The situation is the same as with milk - there are no cows, but all the shelves are filled with surrogate.
    By the way, the main reason for the annexation of Crimea was the instructions of the partners to prevent the PRC from building a deep-sea sea terminal there in order to seize the commodity markets of the Black Sea region.
    Sooner or later, the PRC or someone else will establish direct exchange relations according to the scheme - food raw materials for equipment - office plankton will switch to doshirak. Since, for example, Moscowabad is completely unnecessary in this scheme.
    Such schemes are already being implemented with Germany in exchange for grain harvesters.
    Therefore, it will only get worse, and in fact, whoever does not work, does not eat.
    1. -3
      6 July 2024 20: 41
      Absolutely right. There are no inexpensive, genuine locally produced wines on sale in Russia. Due to the meager cultivation of grapes, all the areas of which were destroyed under Gorbachev, then cottage villages grew up in place of the remaining ones, or the city expanded, such as in Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik... Russian wine is produced on a very limited scale, and part of it, for example, wine materials from Abrau-Dyurso, went to other countries (France) for blending, and the other part was supplied in small batches to government agencies of various kinds. What is sold in Russian stores under local brands is nothing more than a watered-down version of imported wine materials delivered from different countries. You can even taste it. Do you want real wine? Alas, but real wine is bottled only outside the Russian Federation...
      1. +6
        7 July 2024 08: 52
        There are good domestic wines, you just need to know how to choose them.
      2. +6
        7 July 2024 18: 28
        absolutely not true... the wines are stocked normally, Fanagoria, Chateau Taman... good wines for little money. The second person in the message apparently hasn’t tried wine at all... since he writes such nonsense
      3. 0
        9 July 2024 14: 40
        Monster Fet, have you tried Divnomorskoe? Or Galitsky? I recommend. There will be other comments.
    2. -1
      7 July 2024 18: 27
      interesting opus... I’ve never read more nonsense on VO... Well-deserved 1st place in nonsense
      1. 0
        8 July 2024 09: 42
        He’s a worthy candidate, but he’s clearly not a champion in delirium; we’ve seen more zealous personnel here)
  5. 0
    6 July 2024 20: 29
    The article is interesting but incomprehensible. What will all these long lists of “wine-growing and wine-growing regions:” mean to us consumers? Will they name the wines after them? Not by grape variety, but by region?
    1. -3
      7 July 2024 18: 32
      Well, I don’t even understand why this article was published, in terms of wine, Crimea is far behind... there only normal port wines can give you something like Madeira sherry.
      The Taman Peninsula has long overtaken them in the quality and range of wine. I once tried the “legendary” white red stone nutmeg... well worth the money... but the vinchisko is so-so, an ordinary chateau Taman with a magnet, the taste will be better
  6. -4
    6 July 2024 23: 14
    Quote from solar
    Now the plant produces 70% of dry products.
    I tried Crimean grappa - a very good drink.

    You have been misled - grappa is not dry wine (just kidding) :))
    Crimean dry ones are usually of low quality and are much inferior to Georgian ones, for example.

    What are you talking about - Georgian wines are mostly cal... Ask a Russian Georgian, he will tell you...:)
    1. +2
      7 July 2024 18: 34
      Well, yes, the Georgians have some good wines... but they are an acquired taste, they are all semi-sweet from the normal ones, they don't make good dry ones in principle, they just don't know how
  7. 0
    6 July 2024 23: 18
    Quote: Monster_Fat
    wine materials from Abrau-Durso went to other countries (France) for blending

    Yes, that’s how it is - the only way out is to make wine yourself, either by growing raw materials yourself, or by buying grapes from producers directly from the field - but last year the price was from 6o / kg rubles for pick-up.
    And the production itself is a pain in the ass—try squeezing 100-200 kg of grapes by hand.
    then ferment, strain, etc. The cycle is about 50 days minimum.
  8. +2
    7 July 2024 09: 08
    What, why and for whom this draft “article” is for, I still don’t understand. It feels like the author pulled paragraphs from Wikipedia without any connection to the meaning.
  9. 0
    7 July 2024 09: 27
    Quote: Stas157
    For a long time I took Inkerman wines. Particularly Pinot. There was good wine. The last time I bought two bottles of Pinot at Megamarket. Vinegar. A completely different wine! Possibly scorched.

    Since 17, I have been experimenting with Crimean wines and settled on Inkerman. The semi-dry red was not bad at all. But in the last couple of years the wine has deteriorated greatly. They say that due to a lack of raw materials, Crimean producers purchase imported wine materials of low quality. In general, I switched to Georgia. Although New World champagnes are still at the level.
  10. The comment was deleted.
  11. 0
    7 July 2024 19: 11
    Quote: purple
    Well, yes, the Georgians have some good wines... but they are an acquired taste, they are all semi-sweet from the normal ones, they don't make good dry ones in principle, they just don't know how

    Vazisubani was made in the USSR, then the damned occupiers left and away we go...
  12. BAI
    +1
    7 July 2024 20: 57
    But I don’t like Crimean wines. I think Taman ones are better