Russia imports first Moldova bulk wine in two years

Dec 17, 2008, 13:31 GMT

Chisinau - A Russian import firm imported a lorry shipment of Moldovan wine on Tuesday, ending a two-year Kremlin boycott of bulk imports.

The lorry container load was destined for processing by the Moscow-based Imperial Vin beverage company. Moldova's Gatchinsky Spirit Factory was the exporter.

The Russian government banned all wine imports from Moldova in 2006, citing worries about low quality and possibly dangerous additives.

Moldovan producers said the embargo was groundless, pointing out Moldovan wine had long competed successfully in markets with stricter health standards than Russia's such as the European Union.

Wine is Moldova's most valuable export. Russia until the cut-off had been the world's largest importer of Moldovan wine.

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin at the time accused the Kremlin of using the wine embargo to punish Moldova for Chisinau's overtures to NATO. Officials in Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the ban was grounded only in a desire to protect Russian consumers.

Russia ended its ban on bottled Moldovan wine in 2007, but until Tuesday had continued to forbid bulk wine imports, preventing a substantial increase in Moldovan wine to Russia. Most of Moldova's wine exports to Russia prior to the embargo had been in bulk.

Prior to the 2006 embargo Moldovan bulk wine exports to Russia were worth some 60 million dollars - one-third of all Russian wine imports at the time and a substantial sum relative to Moldova's tiny agriculture-based economy.

Moldovan wine is well known in Russia for quality and its and wide distribution during the Soviet era. It nonetheless faces strong competition against Georgian and more recently French and Italian wines also popular with Russian consumers.

Moldovan bulk wines are in contrast particularly suitable as a raw material for Russian reprocessing into champagne or sparkling wine, due the Moldovan products' low production and transport costs. Russia's bulk wine import market consumed some 400 million litres of wine last year, the Infotag news agency reported.

Moldova's entire wine exports to Russia for 2007 were some 27 million litres. Moldova's share of that market could 'increase massively' now that bulk wine imports from Moldova into Russia are permitted, said Aleksander Trushin, an Imperial Vin spokesman.