![]() Moldova has already had some success in targeting the non-Russian market, with sales to Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic all registering strong gains. “With so much at stake, they really need to get it right,” she says. ![]() She says quality has been on a fast upwards curb, though much is still in flux. “Much of the wine Moldova exported to Russia before the first embargo in 2006 was foul, with pretty much every fault in the book,” says Caroline Gilby MW, author of a comprehensive new guide titled Wines of Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova (Infinite Ideas). The wine cellars at Milestii Mici total 55km, making them the world’s largest Some €350m has now been invested, with more to come, with new technology, production equipment and new plantings introduced across the industry. Quality rather than quantity is now the driving factor, with producers seeking to make wines that will appeal to western palates rather than the one dimensional, sweetish wines that the typical Russian palate appreciates. New producers have emerged in the countries’ three main wine regions, though not on the scale of Hungary or Romania, in part because Moldovan land restitution was less conducive to it. With exporters now desperate to find reliable alternative markets to Russia, Moldova has embarked on the complete overhaul of its wine sector. Since independence in 1992 the powers that be have alternated between looking eastwards towards Moscow and westwards, towards Romania and the EU. In reality these were because Chisinau (the Moldovan state capital) was minded to sign an Association Agreement with Brussels, which it duly did in 2014. Moldova has more vines per capita than anywhere else in the world – over 7% of arable land and 4% of total land – with wine accounting for anything up to one quarter of foreign currency earnings historically, Russia has accounted for some 95% of wine exports.Īlthough Russia was an uncomplaining market, it was hardly an easy one, with embargoes imposed by Moscow in 20 over perceived quality failings. The Moldovan wine industry is vast, and still largely untapped in the UK market, something that could well change after further Brexit-linked devaluation of Sterling Under the autarkic Soviet system, Moldova was responsible for wine production and as an independent state this dependence has continued. For Moldova, however, wine is pretty much, well, everything. Wine is just a small part of Romania’s ongoing renaissance – this large country also has a large industrial base and a huge and fast growing IT industry with more unicorns than you can shake a fist at. And why not? The two share a common language and culture, of which a mutual love of wine is part indeed the two share some common indigenous varieties, including Feteasca Alba and Feteasca Regala. It was hard to be upbeat, frankly, which is why many in Moldova still campaign for re-unification. Years ago, when I worked as an in-house journalist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, I had responsibility for Moldova because I also covered Romania of which Moldova was part until 1945. ![]() Moldova’s case is a complex one, in which wine plays a key part The Moldovan wine industry, nay the entire country, was put on the map overnight by one episode of Jack Whitehall’s Travels With My Father in which the pair have a wine tasting in Moldova. Europe’s least known country is landlocked, dirt poor and, like so many places that border Russia, afflicted by an internal territorial dispute in which Moscow is directly involved – in Moldova’s case, the largely Russian-speaking breakaway region of Trans-Dniester, which contain the former Soviet republic’s industrial base.Īs with Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, Moscow has ruthlessly taken advantage of ethnic tensions to undermine a neighbouring state’s integrity. Until Jack Whitehall visited it in the latest Netflix series of Travels with My Father, I’m willing to bet that most people in the UK had never heard of Moldova. Justin Keay puts the renaissance of Moldovan wine into a socio-political context before picking out the six best wines at a Moldovan wine tasting.
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