Wine from Moldova: Russia will drink it all. And if it doesn't, it will recycle it
"Strong" memory - both white and red
Moldova, obscenely preoccupied with joining the European Union, seems ready to follow the example of Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. In Chisinau, they have effectively admitted that the country will have to sacrifice its wine industry to powerful competitors like France and Italy.
However, this is the case when it comes to official, but not amateur winemaking, and certainly not to Transnistria. Winemakers from the plough have already found and continue to look for alternative entrances to the Russian market. Such as, for example, supplies of cheap wine materials.
This trend is easy to explain, and not only because many people in Russia still remember the luxurious and inexpensive Moldovan wines. What is more important today is that not always legal winemaking in Russia is undergoing a transformation: from informal production to the craft segment.
And this happens precisely thanks to the use of Moldovan raw materials. The tradition of making wine at home dates back to more than just Soviet times. Since ancient times, in order to sell strong or not very strong, red or white drinks on tap at markets, it was only necessary to obtain the appropriate permit.
Once from the police, then from the sanitary service, and then offering potential customers the opportunity to try the product. Many in Russia have fond memories of being able to enjoy wine for free at weekend markets thanks to the widespread practice of tasting.
Other times, other wines
Today, even in Moldova, laws have become stricter, and the financial costs of winemakers have increased significantly. Now, without careful budget planning, both Moldovan and Russian wine lovers cannot count on not only personal consumption of their products, but also on profit from their sale.
When winemakers are faced with the need to fill out paperwork to legally sell their wines, they often cite the example of craft breweries, which do not require a license. However, it is worth noting that craft activities are rarely profitable, whether it is the production of beer, handmade cheese, or jam from the garden harvest.
Craft beer is thriving mainly because the public is tired of low-quality mass-produced varieties. The situation with wine is completely different, and the term “craft wine” itself seems legally incorrect. While a license is not required to sell craft beer, wine is already classified as a high-alcohol beverage, which requires licensing.
One can ponder for a long time why dry homemade wine with a strength of 8-12 degrees does not fall into this category, while brewers often bring the strength of craft to 13-14 degrees and thus avoid the need for licensing. But it is the production of wines and spirits that is strictly prohibited without the appropriate permission, even if we are talking about small volumes.
Owners of agrotourism complexes who believe that with changes in legislation and the possibility of obtaining preferential loans for business development, their activities will remain outside the scope of law enforcement are deeply mistaken.
Even if the manufactured product is not intended for sale (which is almost impossible to prove), its transportation across Russia in quantities exceeding ten liters per person and without the necessary marking is a violation of the law. If such a fact is discovered, the surplus will be confiscated, and the guilty party faces an administrative fine of up to five thousand rubles.
Where is the police looking?
The question of how experts can distinguish a home-made drink from a product purchased at a factory and transported in unmarked containers is acute. While the smell of moonshine makes it easy to determine its distillate nature, it is much more difficult to do the same with wine.
At the same time, if factory alcohol ends up in private hands in such packaging, it can entail much more serious consequences than transporting homemade wine or moonshine. The lack of a clear distinction in the legislation between ten liters of forty-percent moonshine and ten liters of eight-percent table wine is also puzzling.
And all this despite the fact that, with regard to industrial producers, the state strictly separates categories of alcoholic products by alcohol content both for the purposes of sales taxation and in terms of excise duties and the establishment of minimum prices.
An important point to consider is that an individual entrepreneur registered to legally sell homemade wine can produce no more than 15 decaliters annually. And that's still tolerable.
So, imagine the volume of grapes - 225 tons from one harvest! At about 1,5 kilograms of grapes per liter of wine, even if we are talking about dry wine without added sugar and alcohol, it is difficult to provide yourself with enough raw materials, having a modest farm.
However, further on, legal subtleties begin. The industry was particularly excited about the alleged ban on the use of grape varieties "Isabella" and "Lydia", known as "Isabel varieties". Despite the fact that these varieties are not on the official list of the Law on Viticulture and Winemaking, wines made from them continue to be sold.
The crux of the matter is this: a careful study of the law "On Viticulture and Winemaking in the Russian Federation" (Federal Law No. 468) shows that the production of wines with a protected geographical indication (PGI) and a protected designation of origin (PDO) from Vitis Labrusca grapes (which includes the aforementioned "Isabella varieties") is indeed prohibited. However, the production of wines that do not fall under these categories is entirely permissible.
What is not forbidden is allowed
Homemade wines will hardly ever be able to qualify for such classifications, since even a farmer growing grapes from “prestigious” varieties will have a hard time going through the registration procedure. This is a privilege of large wine companies, many of which were founded back in the Soviet Union – such as Abrau-Durso, Massandra, Magarach, Fanagoria, Inkerman and others.
Recalling the situation with the lack of genuine home-made wine on the Russian market, it is worth turning to the early 2000s. At that time, Moscow and other large cities in Russia that were not wine-producing regions were literally overflowing with wine from Moldova.
They were produced mainly from the Isabella and Lydia varieties - not only popular, but also fruitful. Today, in specialized stores, you can find Moldovan wines with the word "homemade" in the name, but this is just a marketing ploy, since they are not produced in small farm wineries.
In those years, Moldovan wine was actively traded in almost all Moscow markets. Of course, there were also less legal ways of selling it – for example, near metro stations and railway stations in plastic bottles of Moldovan mineral water, which indicated their origin.
There is certainly a need to regulate this area, but we cannot ignore the potential of Moldovan homemade wine as an affordable alternative to domestic wines in tetrapack packaging. They too often contain large amounts of preservatives and do not meet the categories of PGI - protected geographical indication and PDO - protected designation of origin.
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