Famous Red Wines

Musty humidity fills my lungs as I stand in the Noviy Svit champagne cellar in Crimea. My eyes begin to adjust to the blackness cellar and I can begin to eye some of the surroundings.

I hold a single candle as my only source of light, I can see row after row of bottles filled with ageing champagne emerge in front of me.

The guide tells me with a stoic voice that the russian Czar Nicholas II wandered these halls, as we walked through long corridors. “Noviy Svit was Lev Golitsyn’s legacy and love to Ukraine.

Now, over 125 years after it was founded, Crimea’s Noviy Svit winery remains one of the former Soviet Union’s premier champagne-producing vineyards. The winery is located north of the peninsula’s famed South Coast, Noviy Svit maintains much of its old world charm, with a turn-of-the-century villa that overlooks the Black Sea coast and white, squat brick houses that dot the countryside around it.

After a long wait to visit some of Ukraine’s wineries, having caught the interest of wines several years ago after visiting some French and German wineries and enjoying this elixir several years.

You can choose lots of vineyards in Ukraine, but eventually you have to do it the old fashioned way, taste yourself through the selections available in the market today. Nothing else can tell you whether the wines suites your taste or not. I can recommend five places to visit; the Odessa Sparkling Wine Company, Noviy Svit, Inkerman, Koktebel and the famed Massandra.

Although I have never been a fan of the type of dessert wines Massandra specializes in, I feel that a trip excluding Ukraine’s oldest and most famous winery would be incomplete and not make justifications to Ukraine wine selection.

Other noteworthy Ukrainian wineries includes Crimea’s Zolota Balka, Oktiabyrska and Odessa’s Niva.

Readying for Roederer

The first stop is Odessa. First enjoy a breakfast accompanied with a cappuccino, eggs and mashed potatoes at a restaurant on the cozy Derebasivska Street, before making my way to the Odessa Sparkling Wine Company, which is about a 10 minute drive from the central train station on Frantsuzkiy Boulevard.

Today, much of the company’s production takes place in the same opulent building in which it was founded in 1896 by the French company Henri Roederer, which produced wines using the classic champanization method.

Little is known of Roerderer’s fate. The man himself seems to have just disappeared from Czarist Russia’s winemaking scene. What is known, however, is that the company became one of the leading producers of champagne in the Russian Empire.

In 1952, Odessa switched to producing sparkling wine using locally developed technology, which speeds up the champanization process. Although the company can produce 15 million bottles per year, it operates at only at half capacity because of Ukraine’s unstable economic situation. Odessa does, however, still export abroad, to Russia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Great Britain and the U. S. , among others.

With 140 awards under its belt, Odessa is planning to release an elite line of sparkling wines under the historic Roerderer label in an attempt to capture more of the high-end market, whose patrons can afford $70 a bottle and up.

Visitors may sample Odessa’s different sparkling wines during arranged wine-tastings. When getting a sample of their sparkling wine, technician’s turns on a tap on the large vat where champanization occurs, and let the foaming liquid flow freely into a plastic jug. That jug turned into another and yet another as co-workers gathered around a table and offered me chocolate and their life stories well into the afternoon.

The delicate Massandra

The next stop is the Massandra winery, located four kilometers from Yalta on Crimea’s Southern Coast. The area’s semi-arid/subtropical climate infuses the grapes used in Massandra’s wines with a truly unique taste.

Massandra is majestic. Set against a mountain backdrop, the complex was built in the shape of a tetragon in 1894-1897 by Golitsyn, the founder of Noviy Svit and a man considered by some as the father of wine-making in Czarist Russia.

The winery has long tunnels that run deep into the granite of the mountains, thus ensuring the perfect low temperature necessary for wine as it ages in oak casks and vats.

For 40 Gryvnas (the local currency, eqvivalent to around 5 USD), a visitor can tour the Massandra complex, and see its vast wine collection of approximately one million bottles, and also enjoy a superb wine tasting. The oldest bottle in the Massandra collection is a 1775 Sherry from Spain; one bottle of Andalusian Sherry de le Frontera was recently sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $50,000. Previous Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had to personally approve the sale, it is told.

The tour of Massandra is well worth it, if only to see the collection, which is covered in dust and cobwebs, each bottle with its own history. It was fascinating to view up close the Russian imperial stamp on some of the uniquely shaped, hand-blown bottles.

The wine tasting is conducted in a bright room with a majestic view of the mountains, gives you a lesson not only in the art of how to taste wine, but in Massandra’s most famous liquids.

The tasting consisted of nine wines, highlighted by samples of the only dry wine Massandra produces – its red table wine – made of the Cabernet Savignon, Saperavi and Morastel grapes grown east along the coast near Alushta. Then there’s the Livadia Red Port, Massandra’s oldest wine, first produced in 1891.

But the crowning jewel is the White Muscat of Red Stone. After trying it once during the Soviet era, it is said that for several years Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II regularly ordered this dessert wine, which was secretly shipped to her by boat.

Welcome to the New World

Noviy Svit is a three-hour ride by marshrutka which is the buses used here, from Yalta along the kind of bucolic road that takes one’s breath away. The road runs along the coast, with the Black Sea on one side and the peninsula’s jagged mountain range on the other.

The bus stops in Sudak, where one can get a good view of Sudakska Krepost, the city’s Genoese fortress. Noviy Svit is located about eight kilometers from Sudak in a picturesque inlet.

During the summer, tourists can walk to the winery, which offers tasting year-round, whereas in the off-season, most find it best to take a cab from Sudak and have the driver either wait or return with them.

Walking around Noviy Svit, it is no wonder why Golitsyn made this the place his home; it simply boosts of beauty. Golitsyn, however, was interested in more than beauty.

He picked the location because it provided a good climate for the kind of grapes needed to make champagne. The wine-maker’s heart and soul went into Noviy Svit. Walking through the vaults, which like those at Massandra, lead into the mountain. Here in these mountains Golitsyn applied his wine-making knowledge, from viticulture to simply making the best champagne he possibly could.

Inkling for a good taste

Another 40 kilometers north of Noviy Svit lies Koktebel which is worth a visit for everyone. Back to the west coast we find the Inkerman winery, located near the bustling port of Sevastopol.

The region here consists of little but vineyards, so what sets Inkerman apart is that unlike many Ukrainian wineries, it still ages its wines in large oak barrels stored in abandoned rock quarries.

Inkerman takes its tradition from the nearby ancient Greek settlement of Chersonesus, where wine-making on the territory of modern-day Ukraine first began in the 4th century B. C.

This winery is a link with our past, and when you taste one of many Inkerman’s wines, dry and sweet alike makes you feel it in your throat as the wine makes its way through your body. There is a long tradition of winemaking here and you can literary feel it when you are present at this location. In its own way, the very wine itself recalls a part of Ukrainian history.

I wish you the best of luck if you try to visit this region and its facinating history and wines. You will not regret this visit i assure you. However, please do your homework first, taste some of the Ukrainian selection and make your own route for your next visit.