Crimean wine will disappear from Ukrainian shelves, and will not appear on Russian ones any time soon
Simferopol, May 20 (Navigator, Astra Yazyka) – Crimean winemakers are hoping for a successful holiday season. Products are shipped to Ukraine with the remaining excise stamps, and for the Russian market, manufacturers need to connect to EGAIS - a unified state information system for recording the volume of production and turnover of ethyl alcohol, alcoholic and alcohol-containing products.
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Of the more than 100 enterprises in the industry in Crimea, 27 have been nationalized. According to the head of the Novy Svet sparkling wine factory, Yanina Pavlenko, who is also a deputy of the State Council of Crimea, the main task now is to carry out an inventory of nationalized enterprises so as not to “lose a single one.” hectares of vineyards and not miss a single unit of state property.”
“And we need to start with an inventory of vineyards, because on paper there are about 40 thousand hectares, but how many there really are, how many of them are bearing fruit and in what condition they are - this is a rhetorical question - Unfortunately, during the inventory, facts are revealed when on paper there are entire factories, but in fact there are ruins, like after a bombing.”
Operating enterprises have created an industry association - the Crimean Bureau of Grapes and Wine. It includes 30 producers of grapes, wine and cognac, who intend to produce products under a single brand “Crimean Wine”, as an indicator of product quality. However, to do this, it is first necessary to adopt a special federal law “On Grapes and Wine.” Russian producers have not been able to lobby for it for several years, since this document will provide a clear separation between wine and alcohol-containing liquid, which is now considered any product, natural or synthesized.
“In Russia today, all relationships in the industry are regulated by a single law on the circulation of alcohol, and due attention is not paid to winemaking. And our colleagues in other regions of Russia today look with hope that thanks to Crimea they have a chance to move the industry forward,” Pavlenko noted.
In the meantime, Crimean winemakers are shipping products with the last stocks of excise stamps. In the future, the presence of Crimean wines on the shelves of Ukrainian stores depends on political decisions in Russian-Ukrainian relations.
“Understanding how difficult it is today to enter every shelf, we would really not like to lose the Ukrainian market,” admits the director of Novy Svet.
Until 2015, Crimean producers retained Ukrainian excise tax rates, which are two times lower than Russian ones. But the products will be sold only on the territory of the peninsula, for which Rosalkogolcontrol will issue a special excise stamp.
“Prior to the installation of the EGAIS system, which requires a number of technical measures, and most importantly, costs, we are actually limited to sales only in Crimea. Therefore, we are counting on a good holiday season,” Pavlenko concluded.
However, the Novy Svet plant plans to more than double production volumes over the next three years to 4 million bottles per year. The industry association has much more ambitious plans - to return Crimean vineyards to the levels of the last century, when plantings occupied 152 thousand hectares and the industry provided up to 60% of budget revenues. Now in all of Crimea there are no more than 40 thousand hectares of vineyards, and revenues are limited to 5-7% of the budget revenue.
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