If there was a war raging in your country, it’s hard to imagine that you would be thinking of making wine. But that’s what 160 winemakers in Ukraine do. They still make wine. February 24 marked two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. The war zone extends along all of the eastern border and the south along the shores of the Black Sea. That’s also the region where most of Ukraine’s vineyards are located. So, perhaps now is an excellent time to give a thought to those courageous winemakers and take a look at what they do. The upcoming ProWein wine show in Düsseldorf, Germany, will be an occasion to taste these wines. Here’s a short introduction to Ukrainian wine and some more info on their ProWein participation.
In spite of “The Troubles”, fifteen Ukrainian wineries will be present at the upcoming Prowein on March 10-12. We have a particular interest in Ukraine. This is not only because the current war is important both for the country and for all other Western democracies but also for other, more personal reasons.
This is a longer version of an article published on Forbes.com.
We have been involved in the Wine Travel Awards (WTA) event organised by the Ukrainian magazine Drinks+ since its inception, both as a jury member and as recipient of a “world’s best wine guide” award. (Need I add that we have obviously not been in the judging panel for the categories where we have also competed?) The Wine Travel Awards is an ambitious event created to promote wine tourism across the world. There are several different competitions about wine tourism and travel, both international and national. Most of them tend to promote wine tourism projects founded on substantial capital and marketing investments; expensive and “impressive” wine tourism projects. The WTA is quite different, it seems to me, trying to promote a broader scope of wine tourism. More on WTA here. The WTA will also be at ProWein – go visit them there!
We have also done a United Nations-sponsored series of seminars on wine tourism for Ukrainian winemakers, organised and financed by the ITC-International Trade Centre (a UN agency) and the Swedish government. This was four online sessions where we discussed things like what are the drivers for a wine producer to do any kind of “wine tourism”, what investments are needed (if any), what is “quality” wine tourism, how do you organise yourself to do it and collaborate with others, as well as many other aspects of wine tourism.
I was very impressed that so many people in the wine business in war-torn Ukraine had the energy to spend time thinking about and discussing wine tourism, in particular since wine tourism is not going to be a reality in Ukraine until the war is over. See more on ITC Ukraine’s activity on their YouTube channel, including the wine tourism seminars.
We are therefore particularly happy to learn that fifteen wineries from Ukraine will be at Prowein. There will be wineries from several different regions: Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zakarpattia and Kherson. As you can see, some of these are very close to the war front. Visit the Ukrainian stand at Prowein: 13H52. Sadly (?), we are in New Zealand, on our wine tour, during Prowein, but I hope that you might have the opportunity to meet them and taste the wines at Prowein. More info: ukr
Wine production in Ukraine
Ukraine is a very big agricultural country. It ranks on the world’s top-ten list of biggest producers of sunflowers, barley, wheat, and corn, although production has been severely hampered by the war. However, today, the Ukrainian vineyards are modest in size, around 30,000 hectares (75,000 acres). That’s about half the size of Hungary or of Bulgaria, or one-sixth of the California grape acreage. (The number exclude the Russian -occupied territories since there are no reliable figures for them today.)
There are around 160 officially registered wineries. Some are very small. 40 are considered “craft wineries” with a production of less than 100,000 litres per year, which probably equates to a vineyard surface up to 5-15 hectares for these smaller producers. Some are very big.
Ukraine’s vineyards can be found mainly in the southern part of the country, towards the Black Sea in the Odesa and Kherson regions. You might recognise those names from the war reporting. Crimea has also long been an important wine-producing region but has been under Russian control since 2014, when Russia invaded the peninsula, so the status of wine production there today is uncertain. There are also extensive vineyards in the westernmost part of Ukraine, on the border to Hungary and Slovakia, in the region called Zakarpattia. But there are also wine producers in several other parts of the country but on a smaller scale.
In a time when unusual and indigenous grapes have become trendy, Ukraine has much to offer wine lovers and wine drinkers who want to explore new things. There are numerous local (indigenous) grape varieties to discover: telti-kuruk, sukholimansky white, citronny of magarach, kokur, odessa black, ekim kara, magarach bastardo. I recently had the opportunity to taste Odessa black, and black it was indeed. It was dense, dark, intense fruit and had a strong backbone structure. It is what is called in French a tinturier, in other words, the grape juice is dark red (almost all red grapes have a clear juice). It’s a crossing between cabernet sauvignon and alicante Bouchet (also a teinturier). It was developed in Ukraine in the 1950s. But they also have many international grape varieties, of course. There are more than 200 different varieties grown.
I have only tasted a handful of Ukrainian wines so far, so it is difficult to have an opinion of the country as a whole. The odessa black that I mentioned above was certainly one that had great potential, as well as some made from the more “traditional” international varieties. Some were semi-sweet, which might not be so suited for the export markets.
Ukrainian wine exports were a modest $9 million in 2023, which is perhaps not surprising. More surprising is that they managed to make and export any wine at all while the war is raging around the corner. Their main export markets are Estonia, Great Britain, USA, Sweden, Norway, and Japan.
They have an export promotional organisation called Wines of Ukraine, which this year will participate in the big international trade fair ProWein in Düsseldorf (Germany) on March 10-12. Sixteen wineries, an impressive 10% of all producers in the country, will be represented there. It will undoubtedly be an excellent opportunity to discover some unusual wines as well as to support a country at war.
The wineries (and spirits producers) that will be at ProWein are:
- Beykush Winery, Mykolaiv region
- Big Wines, Kyiv region
- Biologist, Kyiv region
- Bolgrad, Odesa region
- Chateau Chizay, Zakarpattia
- Cikera, Kyiv region
- Grande Vallee, Odesa region
- Honey Badger, Kyiv region
- Kolonist Winery, Odesa region
- Koblevo, Mykolaiv region
- myWine by Eduard Gorodetsky, Odesa region
- SHABO Family Winery, Odesa region
- 46 Parallel Wine Group, Odesa region
- Stoic Winery, Kherson region / Odesa region
- Shosh Winery, Zakarpattia
- Villa Tinta, Odesa region
Several international projects are ongoing in Ukraine to help support and develop the wine sector, as well as the rest of the agricultural business; USAID, the United Nations and even the Swedish government.
