Glou-Glou is your rendezvous with natural wines from all over Europe, forgotten grape varieties and ancestral winemaking methods brought up to date.
Every week, Zeweed brings you good bottles to share with friends and to drink with or without moderation, but always in the Glou-Glou spirit.
Today, we’re off to discover Russian champagnes, “sparkling wines” that are more topical than ever.
As you’ve probably seen this week, the law signed by Vladimir Putin on July 2 stipulates that only sparkling wines produced on Russian territory can bear the Champagne appellation, with French champagne now having to be called vin pétillant.
The spirits division of LVMH, Moët-Hennessy, which had in a 1stst time suspended its exports to Russia, recently announced that it would resume after a change of label. No question of opposing the will of the master of the Kremlin.
We asked Anton,Russian sommelier, blogger/influencer (instagram: @winepetersburg)
for his expert opinion on the Russian wine market.
Anton: “The entire Russian wine community was shocked to hear the news. In reality, we have nothing that can replace champagne. .”
There’s Franciacorta, Prosecco, Spanish Cava, German Sekt and Crémant.
But that’s not enough, because there’s a growing demand for Champagne in Russia.
There are two points to be made about assigning the Champagne appellation only to Russian sparkling wines:
- Champagne is the name of an appellation, but for the Russian consumer it is above all a style of wine.
- The Champagne appellation in Russia dates back to Tsarist times, when Prince Lev Golitsyn (1845-1915) presented the Tsar with a top-quality sparkling wine and received permission to call it Champagne.
Later came Soviet champagne, with a production of tens of millions of bottles, and strong propaganda.
Launched in 1937 under Stalin, the Sovetskoye Champanskoye brand was intended to desacralize a bourgeois drink by making it accessible to all proletarians in the Soviet Union.
During the 90s, the quality of this “champagne”, which was never very high, declined further until, in 2017, quality Russian sparkling wines began to appear.
In fact, for affluent Russian consumers, Russian sparkling wines have never been a serious competitor to French champagne.
For the average Russian who goes to a wine shop and asks for a bottle of champagne, the sales assistant’s response is usually, “Champagne champagne or sparkling wine?”
So the customer calls champagne a style of wine, but Anton adds that in a democratic country you can’t change the appellation of a protected origin product just to please local producers.
Substitution is not a development option for Russian wine producers, on the contrary, as only healthy competition can contribute to an increase in production quality and quantity.
In conclusion, Anton predicts that local producers will benefit from the new legislation in the short term, but once the new label is in place champagne sales will return to previous levels.
And for the curious, on the occasion of a forthcoming trip to Russia, Anton gives us his three “Russian champagne” recommendations:
Temelion 60, 48 or 36 Brut (Lefkadia)
Impérial d’Or, Blanc de Blancs (Abrau-Durso)
Paradisio (Noviy Svet)
За ваше здоровье! (Cheers!) and see you next week.
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