The Georgian people have produced wine since ancient times. Neither seljuks, romans, sassanids, abbasids, armenians, sovietics and separatists have slowed the passion for wine in this Land. Even before Christianity here (century I), Georgians believed in the god of wine: Dionysos.
The wine is made here through the Georgian method: with 500 native grape varieties, giant clay vessels (kvevris) and a long time of maturing. This millenary method has achieved that the wine has the same flavor today as in 7000 BC without losing quality. Each house has its own cellar and is the most sacred place for Georgians.
During the Soviet era the Georgian method was abandoned to establish a mass production capable of quenching the thirst of the proletariat. The Soviet elites, who ruled Georgia since 1921 to 1991 nationalized family vineyards for that purpose. Only the excedents were private. An agitated XX century, but when there is georgian wine, dance and faith any country is invincible.
Yes, Georgians love wine |
When the republics of the Soviet Union formed a single state, they produced 48.000.000 hectoliters of wine in 1980, being USSR the 3rd / 4th wine productor in the world. The raw material came from the Moldavian SSR, Georgian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR or south of Russian RSFS. Everything changed after the dismemberment of the Soviet regime, and the immense wineries gave way to a viticulture that faces many challenges to reach quality levels.
The current Ukrania has a good place for viticulture in the southern part of the country, on the Black Sea edge, with a latitude close to that of the Oregon wine region. The first traces of vines are recorded on the Krim peninsula thanks to the Hellenic colons before Jesus-Christ.
In the XI century the monks will be in charge of taking over the Scythians, arriving from central Asia and planting vineyards in the north of the country. In the XX century (1920s and 1930s) many vineyards were destroyed during the Soviet repression of peasants. From there, the priority was quantitative production, as was the case in Georgian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Hungarian PR, Romanian RPR or Bulgarian PRB.
Romania
produces wine for over 4ooo years. It was the
Romans
who
extended viticulture in this part of his empire. Here, the environmental conditions are characterized by Carpați
Mountains
from north to east, the Dunărea
River
in the south and the Black Sea in the east with a huge temperature
variation from summer to winter. Temperature variation that forces
the vines to root around Carpați
Mountains
forming a circle, also in the Transilvaniei
plateau
and in the regions near the Black Sea.
During
the Middle Ages the viticulture is based in Romania, in XIV and XV
centuries the popularity of Cotnari
wines
(northeast,
a few kilometers from Besarabia border) born. Cotnari was the fief of
an important Roman-Catholic community composed of Germans and
Hungarians where the French monks arrived to plant vineyards with
their own seeds. Phylloxera
arrived
in 1880 to Romania and destroys 60% of the vineyard (including
indigenous cépages),
it is not until the end of the II WW when are replanted the affected
surfaces with imported rootstocks .
With the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Romania and in the framework of a collectivized economy, quality wine is sacrificed for the benefit of big productions. Exports are made to other countries in Eastern Europe and slightly improves the wine industry. In 1989 Nicolae Ceaucescu's Romania sinks and with him the wine sector falls. This ballast has will left Romania as a secondary reference in the European wine scene but anyway as a land of great white wines, especially demi-sec wines and singular cépages like Fetească or Grasă.
During the Roman rule, Bulgarian viticulture was booming
until the Empire's collapse and sinking. This sector was not reborn
until the First
Bulgarian Empire (681
to 1018 a.C), even excessively. During the Byzantine Empire,
viticulture is maintained and evolves commercially thanks to its
strategic position between the West and the East. The Ottoman
occupation of the Balkan peninsula (s. XIV and XV) meant, despite
Islamic law, the production of small-scale wine.
The Bulgarian National Revival (1878) not only returned independence to Bulgaria but a new way winemaking. Thanks to a new technology and more hygienic processus, the native varieties quality wine is elaborated by the first Cooperatives and they begin to be known. But the happyness is short... Four (4) wars from 1885 to 1945 that will face Bulgaria against the Ottomans, their Balkan neighbors, the Allied and the IIWW two belligerents sides.
The wars ends and Bulgaria stay in 1946 communist and with its definitive borders. The wine during the People's Republic will break production records thanks to the Sovietic demand. The wine industry was logically nationalized but by the 80's the quantity begins to be abandoned and the quality is sought. With the USSR fall in 1990 private interests put their hands in the Bulgarian vineyard and in this way the first capitalist projects were born.
The climatic conditions of the Anatolia peninsula have always allowed viticulture, especially in the more coastal areas. The Hittites established viticulture in the current Turkey before Jesus-Christ. That pre-Islamic empire made viticulture flourish, especially on the Aegean coast. Seljuqs from Central Asia are installed in Anatolia and as an Islamic people banned the winemaking but not of table grapes. After the IWW Atatürk stablish the new Turkish state basis in secular and modern values, which means that viticulture is once again legal. Türkiye is currently very strong in grape production but acquiring alcohol stays very expensive.
All the countries in the black sea have at least a few award-winning wines so the best way to find out seems to be to organize a complete tour from the east of Turkey (Elazığ has some really good wine) to the west of Ukraine.
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