After six years of living with an onerous embargo, will Russian consumers soon be able to again get their fix of Borjomi mineral water and sweet Khvanchkara wine from Georgia? Statements coming out from both Moscow and Tbilisi make it sound like that could be the case.
"Russia and Georgia are ready to solve practically the issue of returning Georgian wine into the Russian market. The supply of Georgian wine into Russia was banned in 2006", Andrey Denisov, Russia's First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, was quoted as saying earlier this week.
“We are talking about the restoring the position of Georgian winemaking in our market. At least the both sides are ready to solve the issue.”
Meanwhile, according to the state-run Voice of Russia website, Georgia's Minister of Agriculture, David Kirvalidze, yesterday said his country is ready to negotiate with Moscow in order to enable Georgian wine and mineral water to return to Russian supermarket shelves.
Reporting on these developments, the Independent suggests that what is likely helping along this wine detente between Moscow and Tbilisi are the results of last month's Georgian Parliamentary elections:
In Georgian parliamentary elections last month, the party of pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili was defeated by a coalition led by Bizdina Ivanishvili, a zebra-keeping billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and has promised to improve relations between the two countries. One of the first steps could be the return of the wine trade.
While a return to the Russian market will undoubtedly be a positive step for Georgia's wine industry, as a previous Kebabistan post pointed out, it could be something of a double-edged sword. While initially a difficult blow, the embargo ultimately forced Georgia's winemakers to up their game and move away from producing the low-cost, semi-sweet wines favored by the Russian market in order to compete on the international stage. Should the Russian embargo end, the Georgian wine industry will be faced with a new challenge: maintaining its newfound international credibility while also giving nostalgic Russian wine drinkers what they want.
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