|
By Natalia Feduschak
Special to the Post
Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine
January 30, 2003
SUDAK, Ukraine - As my eyes begin to adjust to the blackness of the Noviy
Svit champagne cellar in Crimea, a musty humidity fills my lungs.
With just a single candle as my only source of light, row after row of
bottles filled with ageing champagne emerge before me.
"Russian Czar Nicholas II wandered these halls," head technician Ludmilla
Zadorozhna said as we walked through long corridors. "Noviy Svit was Lev
Golitsyn's legacy. This was his love."
Now, 125 years after it was founded, Crimea's Noviy Svit winery remains one
of the former Soviet Union's premier champagne-producing vineyards. 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.
I visited Noviy Svit in December 2002, one stop on a five-day tour across
Ukrainian winemaking country. Having traveled from Odessa to Crimea, even
through the cold weather, the season's lack of tourists gave me the chance
to indulge myself more completely in the art of wine- and champagne-making.
I had long wanted to visit some of Ukraine's wineries, having caught the
winery 'bug' several years ago after visiting some Moldovan wineries,
including renowned Cricova.
To prepare for the trip, I sampled a number of Ukrainian wines with the idea
of visiting those wineries whose products most appealed to me. It was a
subjective test: another person's taste buds may have led them someplace
else. I eventually decided on five places: 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 felt that a trip excluding Ukraine's oldest and most
famous winery would be incomplete.
Much to my surprise, the Ukrainian ministry that deals with wines offered me
a sample itinerary that nearly mirrored my choices. Their considerations of
other noteworthy Ukrainian wineries included Crimea's Zolota Balka,
Oktiabyrska and Odessa's Niva.
Readying for Roederer
With my course set, I took the overnight train from Kyiv and arrived at my
first stop, Odessa. To escape from the moderate drizzle of that early
morning, I quickly sat down to a breakfast of cappuccino, eggs and mashed
potatoes at a restaurant on lovely Derebasivska Street, before making my way
to the Odessa Sparkling Wine Company, 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 halfcapacity
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.
"That's a market we want to break into," said the company's acting director,
Andriy Drozhniy. "We're actively promoting the champagne."
Visitors may sample Odessa's different sparkling wines during arranged
wine-tastings. To give me a sample of their sparkling wine, technicians
turned 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 life stories well into the afternoon.
Masterful Massandra
My next stop was 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. (Indeed,
when I arrived in Simferopol, it was snowing hard. By the time I passed over
the Crimean Mountains two hours later, the weather had turned warm and
sunny. A definite benefit of Yalta: it rarely snows there.)
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 Hr 40, a visitor can tour Massandra, see its vast wine collection of
approximately one million bottles, and 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. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had to personally
approve the sale, I was 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.
Prior to Massandra, I had never been to a wine-tasting. This tasting,
however, conducted in a bright room with a majestic view of the mountains,
was 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 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 van 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 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 for them.
Walking around Noviy Svit, it is no wonder Golitsyn made the place his home;
it simply abounds in 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, technologist Zadorozhna said as she led me through the
vaults,
which like those at Massandra, lead into the mountain. Here at Noviy Svit,
Golitsyn applied his wine-making knowledge, from viticulture to simply
making the best champagne he possibly could.
An inkling for a good taste
Because of the continuing snowy weather on my visit, I never made it to
Koktebel - another 40 kilometers north of Noviy Svit. Instead, I did an
about-face and headed for 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," said Olha Timoshenko, head
technologist, as we tasted another of Inkerman's many wines, dry and sweet
alike. "We have a long tradition of winemaking here."
In its own way, the very wine itself recalls a part of Ukrainian history.
The Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine;
http://www.kyivpost.com/dayandnight/travel/13471/
For personal and academic use only
|
back
