Russia is leading importer of Georgian wine

According to the Agricultural Ministry of Georgia, from June to September 2013, i.e. when the Russian market became open for Georgian wine and up to date, Georgia exported 8.917 million bottles of natural wine, which is 33.7% of the whole wine export of the country in nine months of the current year. The Ministry stresses that “Russia again is the leading importer of Georgian wine for the first time in a long period.”

In general Georgia exported 26.458 million bottles of wine to 49 countries from the beginning of the year; the index is by 71% bigger than in the same period of the last year. The second place is taken by Ukraine where 8.523 million wine bottles were exported, but not in fourth months, but during the whole 2013.

The top-five also includes Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Poland – 20.7% of the whole export. They are followed by Latvia, China, Lithuania, Estonia, the U.S.A., and other countries. This year Georgia has begun to export wine to Brazil, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Italy, Singapore, Jordan, Sweden, and Spain.

If Georgian wine export to Russia continues to grow in such a pace, it may surpass the export volume to all other countries together, like it used to be till 2006 when Gennady Onishchenko banned import of Georgian wines, explaining this by a low quality and a big number of falsified products. (Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza, Nov 15, 2013)