Post-Perestroika Warrior - Passport magazine

Wine Tasting
text by Charles W. Borden
I remember buying a warm Russian beer in Moscow in the
summer of 1998, sold in a scratched recycled bottle which cost
six rubles. I also had to find an empty bottle to turn in to qualify
to buy it. A bottle of real Dutch imported Heineken cost eight
rubles. No wonder that, even in the regions, most beer was
imported. Within weeks after the Russian debt default in the
fall, the Heineken was 38 rubles but the Russian beer just eight.
These days, Russia’s Heineken is brewed in-country, though
most likely with some of the better malts now being made
from Russian barley, and though the local brew doesn’t compare
with the real Dutch version, it benefits from the fact that
its brand is better known than some local ones.
There has been nothing like Russian financial crises for observation
of economic behavior of consumer businesses. The 1998
economic crisis spurred investment in domestic food production,
and the current crisis should have the same effect if the Russian
Central Bank doesn’t step too hard on the ruble to maintain
a low exchange rate. In the summer of 1998, Russia was almost
completely import dependent and farmers and food companies
had difficulties competing. They were saddled with very
low quality processing tools and poor or non-existent packaging.
In retrospect, the transformation of the food industry has
been marvelous, but there is still a lot more work to do.
Bargain wines were the immediate effect of the current
crisis for dollar or euro wine shoppers since the ruble shelf
prices changed little if at all. A bottle of Barton & Guestier Sauvignon
Blanc from my local convenience shop stood at 360
rubles for months, just over $15 before the crisis started, but
$10 afterwards. No more – inventories that were bought last
fall for the holiday season have cleared and the current price
for the new B&G Sauvignon Blanc is 490 rubles, matching the
previous dollar price.
Shoppers for wines that are priced $20 or more will probably
not notice or care that they are priced forty percent higher in
ruble terms. But for the ruble shopper whose income was not
indexed in dollars, the market has changed. I was surprised
recently at the decline of the wine selection at my nearby
Sedmoi Kontinent. Gone are many reasonable quality wines
that must now be priced forty percent more in rubles, so they
do not find a place on the shelves.
This is not good news for our readers. It has always been irksome
to pay two or three times European or US prices for wines,
and that will certainly continue. And unfortunately, the financial
crisis will likely firm the hold that importers have on the market.
But let’s forget those ruble prices and hit that “reset button” –
Hillary Clinton had it right, we’re in for some “peregruzka”.
We have been taking a new look at the wines in our “every
day” price range, which is now 450+ rubles and other ways to
economize. At the end of this article we have a list of some
very good wines that we have found in this range, some new
on the market. It’s also time to take another look at domestic
wines, but we’ll leave that for another issue.
Crisis Wine Buying
September 2009
A couple of final buying tips:
Azbuka Vkusa still has one of the best wine selections
among Moscow supermarkets, though the selection is also
thinner than before. They also have better in-shop storage
conditions than other supermarkets.
Get a Metro card if you can. Metro has a decent wine selection
and prices beat others by 20% or so.
There are a few, but very few, very good wines at the boutiques
(Magnum, Kaufman, Kollektsiya Vin, Grand Cru) at less
than $20. For the wines they carry, buy at the boutique shops.
Prices are likely to be the lowest since they are owned by importer
companies. By comparison, Globus Gourmet prices are
much higher for the same wines.
Warning: I still see wines on sale that have been here since
2007. How to tell – they have the old customs tax stamp
wrapped over the top of the capsule. I would be very cautious
about any such wine given the difficult situation that wines
face in storage in Moscow.
The following are some “finds” from the past few months.
Any wine that we score 4 or higher is well worth seeking out
and we would not hesitate to recommend it or buy it again at
the current price. These wines are likely to retail currently
above 500 rubles but less than 750 rubles. P