YALTA, Ukraine -- Crimea's wine-growers, still reeling from Mikhail Gorbachev's disastrous anti-alcohol campaign, have been dealt further blows by post-Soviet economic collapse, high taxes and aging equipment.
Ukraine's mountainous sub-tropical peninsula -- ideally suited to vineyards but little else -- cultivated grapes from ancient Greek times and its sweet fortified wines were favored by both tsars and politburo chiefs.
"Many of our wines are unique -- there are no equivalents in the West," said Valery Yezhov, a top official at Crimea's Magarach Wine Making Institute.
"But Crimean winemaking is on its knees and survives strictly on the enthusiasm of producers. We live in a country in crisis where winemaking is viewed as the first sector to attack to raise revenue."
Crimean wines stand apart in that most are made using wheat spirit in addition to grapes, making them "unnatural" by Western standards.
The fortified wines bear names familiar to Western consumers -- port, madeira, sherry, muscat, champagne. Industry officials say they are renaming them to take account of legal considerations ignored in the Soviet era.
Some 11 million bottles are produced annually, but only 15,000 of the best-known "special dessert" types -- White Muscat, Black Doctor and Sunny Valley.
Russia's Romanov imperial family favored Crimean port produced near Livadia -- later the site of the 1945 Yalta conference where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt determined the future shape of Europe.
Grigory Rasputin, "adviser" to Russia's last empress Alexandra, was said to drink entire tubs of Crimean madeira. Soviet legend has it that former Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev drank the wines to excess and then drove his many imported cars, with police quickly clearing the roads during his annual seaside holiday in the region.
Gorbachev's bid to curb production and sales of liquor to promote his perestroika reforms shattered the industry and 30 percent of Crimea's vineyards were destroyed. Communist Party activists told producers to convert to non-alcoholic drinks.
"They turned us into outlaws," said Inna Vasileva, who for more than 20 years has overseen production of sherry at the Dionis winemaking plant in Crimea's chief town, Simferopol. "We were told to produce juice, syrup, alcohol-free champagne, whatever we wanted except wine. All we could do was grit our teeth and hope it would soon end."
Industry workers recalled stashing the most prized bottles in caves and even equipping themselves with primitive weapons if any zealous official tried to seize them. Top specialists left for other, more favored, branches of industry.
For some, the consequences were more than economic.
The Magarach Institute's director, Pavel Golodriga, hanged himself in his home rather than carry out Kremlin directives.
Many producers say that current difficulties -- aging technology, poor glass, high taxes and the worst drought in a century -- could finish them off.
"We have still not recovered from the Gorbachev campaign and our equipment has remained the same for 20 years. No industry could cope with that," said Yezhov.
Attempts to market Crimean wines run up against a series of barriers innate to the legacy of haphazard Soviet industry.
"A Western consumer is not interested in buying such a product, right?" said Yury Semyonov, marketing manager for Dionis, holding a bottle of sherry priced at about 80,000 karbovanets (just under $1).
"The glass is of low quality, the stopper plastic, the label unattractive. We lose every time on appearance, even if the quality is good."
His firm was concluding deals with an Austrian partner for labels and a Portuguese firm for cork. Finding better quality glass was a tougher problem which he has still not been able to resolve.
Industry officials say they are aiming sales at other former Soviet republics -- Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. More ambitious long-term targets include Israel, Poland, South Africa and perhaps other European countries.
Sellers must also overcome deeply-rooted mentalities at home -- Slavs prefer vodka to wine, however fortified. But a certain aura still surrounds wine in Ukraine and its supposed medicinal and other qualities.
In 1986 Ukrainians queued for hours for red wine to fend off the effects of radiation in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In September residents of Crimea itself bought up huge quantities of white wine to counteract a cholera outbreak.
"The effects of red wine on radiation and white wine on cholera are documented and proven," said Yezhov.
"We need to teach people how to use wine. It will take a generation or two to get children to see it differently from their parents."
Ukraine's mountainous sub-tropical peninsula -- ideally suited to vineyards but little else -- cultivated grapes from ancient Greek times and its sweet fortified wines were favored by both tsars and politburo chiefs.
"Many of our wines are unique -- there are no equivalents in the West," said Valery Yezhov, a top official at Crimea's Magarach Wine Making Institute.
"But Crimean winemaking is on its knees and survives strictly on the enthusiasm of producers. We live in a country in crisis where winemaking is viewed as the first sector to attack to raise revenue."
Crimean wines stand apart in that most are made using wheat spirit in addition to grapes, making them "unnatural" by Western standards.
The fortified wines bear names familiar to Western consumers -- port, madeira, sherry, muscat, champagne. Industry officials say they are renaming them to take account of legal considerations ignored in the Soviet era.
Some 11 million bottles are produced annually, but only 15,000 of the best-known "special dessert" types -- White Muscat, Black Doctor and Sunny Valley.
Russia's Romanov imperial family favored Crimean port produced near Livadia -- later the site of the 1945 Yalta conference where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt determined the future shape of Europe.
Grigory Rasputin, "adviser" to Russia's last empress Alexandra, was said to drink entire tubs of Crimean madeira. Soviet legend has it that former Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev drank the wines to excess and then drove his many imported cars, with police quickly clearing the roads during his annual seaside holiday in the region.
Gorbachev's bid to curb production and sales of liquor to promote his perestroika reforms shattered the industry and 30 percent of Crimea's vineyards were destroyed. Communist Party activists told producers to convert to non-alcoholic drinks.
"They turned us into outlaws," said Inna Vasileva, who for more than 20 years has overseen production of sherry at the Dionis winemaking plant in Crimea's chief town, Simferopol. "We were told to produce juice, syrup, alcohol-free champagne, whatever we wanted except wine. All we could do was grit our teeth and hope it would soon end."
Industry workers recalled stashing the most prized bottles in caves and even equipping themselves with primitive weapons if any zealous official tried to seize them. Top specialists left for other, more favored, branches of industry.
For some, the consequences were more than economic.
The Magarach Institute's director, Pavel Golodriga, hanged himself in his home rather than carry out Kremlin directives.
Many producers say that current difficulties -- aging technology, poor glass, high taxes and the worst drought in a century -- could finish them off.
"We have still not recovered from the Gorbachev campaign and our equipment has remained the same for 20 years. No industry could cope with that," said Yezhov.
Attempts to market Crimean wines run up against a series of barriers innate to the legacy of haphazard Soviet industry.
"A Western consumer is not interested in buying such a product, right?" said Yury Semyonov, marketing manager for Dionis, holding a bottle of sherry priced at about 80,000 karbovanets (just under $1).
"The glass is of low quality, the stopper plastic, the label unattractive. We lose every time on appearance, even if the quality is good."
His firm was concluding deals with an Austrian partner for labels and a Portuguese firm for cork. Finding better quality glass was a tougher problem which he has still not been able to resolve.
Industry officials say they are aiming sales at other former Soviet republics -- Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. More ambitious long-term targets include Israel, Poland, South Africa and perhaps other European countries.
Sellers must also overcome deeply-rooted mentalities at home -- Slavs prefer vodka to wine, however fortified. But a certain aura still surrounds wine in Ukraine and its supposed medicinal and other qualities.
In 1986 Ukrainians queued for hours for red wine to fend off the effects of radiation in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In September residents of Crimea itself bought up huge quantities of white wine to counteract a cholera outbreak.
"The effects of red wine on radiation and white wine on cholera are documented and proven," said Yezhov.
"We need to teach people how to use wine. It will take a generation or two to get children to see it differently from their parents."
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