"Something very unusual and dramatic is happening in our country. Many European countries are in danger ... and this means that wine is also in danger." Tina Kezeli, Executive Director of the Georgian Wine Association. November 30, 2024.
It is 3.30am in Tbilisi, Georgia and, in a few hours, I am going to leave the Republic of Georgia after a very strange nine days here.
I have not had much sleep. Between dusk and dawn in the capital, there have been noises of firecrackers, water-cannons, sirens and undefined explosions. For the seventh night in a row, tens of thousands of Georgians have been protesting against an allegedly rigged election in which the Georgian Dream party did far better than expected and, more particularly, the announcement by the recently re-elected government that it is to halt talks with Brussels about EU accession.
The outcome of what, for many Georgians, and outsiders who follow developments in Central and Eastern Europe, could be this country’s ‘Maidan moment’ – the uprising that unseated Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader in 2014 – will have implications for the Georgian wine industry. Despite the success of its qvevri wines among sommeliers and opinion formers across the world, and memories of a politically-motivated 2006 ban of Georgian wine by Vladimir Putin, approximately 70% of Georgia’s wine exports still go to Russia. In July 2024, Georgia was officially the third biggest wine shipper to that country, after Lithuania (which was used by various countries to avoid sanctions or overt sales) and Italy.
For the moment, no-one can predict how this impasse will be broken. Many observers ruefully recall that, a few months after Maidan, Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and began the process that would lead to the more recent full-scale invasion and war with Ukraine.
Government resignations
Over the seven days of protests, journalists have been beaten up and more than 300 people arrested, including 11 opposition politicians. The deputy foreign minister and Georgia’s ambassadors to the US, Czech Republic and the Netherlands have all resigned. As has another government official, Irakli Shaishmelashvili, who had been involved with dispersing protests. He cited ‘family reasons’, but also tellingly posted emojis of a Georgian and an EU flag - the two emblems used by the protesters.
Most of the wine professionals I have met here reflect opinion polls that have consistently shown 80% of Georgians being in favour of EU membership. EU flags fly from a far wider range of buildings than was ever the case in the UK before Brexit, and they feature on Tbilisi street graffiti alongside Ukrainian flags and negative references to Russia and Putin. Many professionals and/or their sons and daughters have joined the protests, both in Tbilisi and other cities.
Confusingly, despite its anti-Brussels stance, Georgian Dream included the ring of golden stars and blue background in its electioneering logo. The rationale for this was that it wanted to join the bloc ‘on its own terms… with dignity’.
Ongoing disputes
Even before the election, however, the party – in power since 2012 – had already spoiled its relationship with the EU, by introducing Russian-style restrictions on foreign-owned organisations and LBGT activism, and announcing plans to curtail political opposition. These moves have already cost Georgia €121m in European aid. Some of that money might have gone to help small winemakers in initiatives like the grants from the GRETA scheme funded by EU4Business Initiative, Sweden and Austria that, in 2020, enabled Zurab Maisashvili to obtain equipment for his winery in the small, hilly region of Racha.
Georgian Dream, was founded by the country’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who denies any bias towards Russia where he made his multi-billion dollar fortune in banking and metals. Instead, the party says that a good relationship with its northern neighbour is essential to avoid Tbilisi suffering the same fate as Kiyv.
Georgia’s relationship with Russia is complex, to say the least. Joseph Stalin and his security chief Lavrenti Beria were both Georgians. After slaughtering the intellectuals of their native land they and, more particularly their successors, left it largely alone, partly because of its impenetrable language and also because, as a fertile region, it reliably delivered a supply of meat, fruit, vegetables and wine. The Russian apparatchiks who could afford to eat out generally did so in restaurants where they’d enjoy Georgian dishes and wine. Georgian restaurants still have a certain cachet in Moscow.
In 1988 and 1989 Georgian protests against Soviet rule were brutally suppressed and, far from coincidentally, in October 1990, the country hosted the Soviet bloc’s first multi-party elections. The previous year, however, the region of Abkhazia in the north west of the country asked Moscow for autonomy from the rest of Georgia, an example that was followed by South Ossetia in the north. These attempts at secession led to a civil war that lasted from 1991-1993 and cost 20,000 deaths and the expulsion from their homes of a quarter of a million Abkhazians. When I visited Georgia in 2003, the Intourist hotel I’d stayed in on my previous trip was full of refugees.
Breakaway regions
Five years later, the two regions offered the pretext for a brief full-scale 2008 war with Russia that followed Western recognition of Kosovo and a move by Tbilisi to join NATO.
The two breakaway regions may, with the help of Russian soldiers have ended up with the autonomy they had sought 40 years earlier, but this came at the cost of effectively becoming extensions of their giant neighbour. Abkhazia, with its 250,000 or so inhabitants, has Georgia’s best beaches, and vineyards with grape varieties not found elsewhere, but you won’t see any Georgian sunbathers on that coast enjoying a glass of Abkhazian wine. The holidaymakers will mostly be Russian.
Wine has done such a great job of introducing Georgia to the rest of the world, and it is such an intrinsic part of Georgian daily life, that it is easy to overestimate its importance to the economy. In fact, exports – including all those bottles that go to Russia – bring in just $260m, a drop in the ocean when compared to the $5.8bn earned by agricultural products as a whole, and $15bn by aerospace and motor vehicles.
Not so much qvevri
The qvevri wines may have been the subject of the competition and symposium that brought me to Georgia, but they represent a mere 5% of commercial production. Their cost of production is high and profitability often lower than that of the mass of semi-sweet and sweet red wine produced in conventional stainless steel tanks and shipped to Russia, Poland and China. The industry is working hard to attract interest in its better dry wines as well as the qvevris, and to reduce reliance on sales to Russia. EU membership was intended to help in this process and to reduce the costs of transport and paperwork. The delay in this process proposed by Georgian Dream, or its curtailment as a result of the government’s behaviour, will be regretted by wine lovers across the world.
But, as I write this, Marine le Pen, a EU-sceptic politician who is also accused of favouring Vladimir Putin, has just effectively brought down the French government, and Romania has seen a previously unknown anti-EU TikToker, win the first round of an election, allegedly with Russian help.
Ukraine, whose wines are attracting international interest, still fervently hopes to become part of the European Union but would this be allowed by any peace deal with Moscow brokered by President Trump, a man with plenty of his own antipathy to the EU?
Even if the Georgian protesters gain victory in their fight, will the European Union, they are so eager to join, still exist in its current form?
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the writer.
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