Putin’s Push for ‘Patriotic’ Wines Sparks Growth in Black Sea Vineyards
Wine production has jumped by a quarter since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Workers collect grapes in a vineyard during the harvest in the village of Moldavanskoye, Krasnodar region, Russia.
Photographer: Mikhail Mordasov/AFP/Getty ImagesFor its Victory Day parade in May, Moscow welcomed world leaders with wines from southern Russia and Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.
There’s no record of what China’s President Xi Jinping or his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made of the wines, but their selection wasn’t accidental. In a meeting with Mikhail Razvozhayev, the governor of the biggest Crimean city, Sevastopol, President Vladimir Putin emphasized that “only Russian wines” had been served at the event marking the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.