Russia's top wine buyers

Russians may love their spirits, but it’s wine that offers opportunities for growth, turning wine buyers into power brokers. Anton Moiseenko reports.

Cafe Pushkin, Moscow
Cafe Pushkin, Moscow

There are interesting and paradoxical discoveries about the Russian wine market: wines, not spirits, have been showing better growth. According to Alexander Mechetin, chairman of the Beluga Group, vodka sales in Russia are stagnating and have halved in the past 15 years. This makes wine buyers an increasingly important group. 

Clearly, the on- and off-trade outlets use different approaches and sales strategies, including hiring different kinds of personnel. In general, there is a (slow) move towards professional buying and wine shelf management practices among big retail groups, with a clear distinction between the old school buyers and the new wave category managers. “A typical buyer is looking to buy at the lowest price,” says Maxim Lesnichenko, managing partner at consultancy Wine Direct, “while the category manager is a level up, looking how to sell better-suited products to the customers, with price being of less concern.”

Market players point out that foreign retailers have been instrumental in bringing a new approach to wine shelves management. Alexey Solovyov, the former head of the Metro Cash & Carry wine department, was one of the first in the off-trade market to start experimenting with smaller brands on the shelf of the big retailer. Solovyov is now developing the beverages department of national retailer Magnit, which owns 500 supermarkets and a whopping 13,000 grocery stores.

Elena Moskalenko of another big federal player, Lenta, is seen by market insiders as one of the few professionals with a great knowledge of wines, a rare combination in the Russian market. For her there’s little surprise that a Western chain such as Metro Cash & Carry became one of the pioneers in the wine retail segment in Russia. “The role of buyers used to be very different than now,” she says. Moskalenko believes in wine education and is experimenting with wine consultants in Lenta’s St Petersburg outlet; it operates about 400 hyper- and supermarkets across Russia, with 14m loyalty card holders.

Wine sales are strengthening across the Carousel retail chain, which has 89 hypermarkets across Russia; it belongs to X5 Retail Group. Elena Rudova manages both food products and the wine department with Xenia Kovchina, head of wine sales. They note that different cities and regions have different wine potential. “We’ve found a number of hypermarkets where people show deeper wine knowledge and are open to experiments,” says Rudova. “In those we’ve introduced wine consultants and a better wine shelf. If you’ve found a place to buy wine it’s quite likely you’ll be buying food there too.”

Many chains see wine shelves as a way to improve their image. Pyaterochka, also part of X5 Retail Group, one of Russia’s biggest federal supermarket chains, selects its wine portfolio by looking closely at what customers can pay and finding them new varieties and regions at more than affordable prices. Gennady Sizykh heads its Alcomarket department.

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Lux retail

It can feel a little lonely in the high-end retail segment in Russia. In fact, ‘Russia’ is a bit of a stretch, as luxury retail only exists in Moscow and St Petersburg. That’s where Azbuka Vkusa (The ABC of Taste) outlets can be found, with about 150 of different sizes. Market professionals consider Anna Radina, head of the wine department, as a thorough professional who cares only about clients’ needs. Azbuka Vkusa imports most of its own wine, while Radina creates loyalty by focusing on the chain brand, rather than on specific wine brands. It is known for employing an army of full-time wine consultants; while there are no specialists in the smaller AV Daily shops, they have a simpler shelf stocked with essential bottles and varieties, not necessarily big wine brands. Radina says it’s these small-format shops that attract a younger clientele open to bold experiments – there’s even wine in cans, something hard to imagine in high-end retail. 

Specialist retail

Unlike the booming food supermarkets where wine is essentially a part of the product mix, specialised wine retail has been left to importers which mostly sell their own selections – Simplewine being a good example. The clear leader is Aroma, with its 240 shops located across Russia. Others include the VinLab chain run by Beluga Group, with a wine portfolio selected by Alexandra Roschina and her team. 
Sergey Studennikov, billionaire founder of the discount grocery shops Krasnoye & Beloye, has conquered the Russian market with his concept of affordable wines and spirits for everybody. The concept aims to please consumers across Russia, with more than 5,000 small shops sporting the unfussy design of the ’90s. The chain is popular for its lower prices for wine, spirits and essential foods; consumers are clearly voting with their rubles.

The HoReCa leaders

Russia’s on-premises market is highly concentrated in Moscow and St Petersburg. With an official population of 15m, Moscow is generally considered to lean towards the commercial end of the wine spectrum, while St Petersburg is believed to be a cradle for the more professional and artistic, with more sommeliers, better wine selections and less dependence on commercial labels.

Both cities are dominated by successful restaurant groups. Some are quite old, such as the Novikov, Dellos and Ginza groups and Alexander Rappoport’s restaurants, while younger and trendier examples include the White Rabbit Family, Perelman People, Twins Group and Probka Family. Most have a chef-sommelier overseeing the overall concept of the group; Ginza, Dellos, Perelman and Twins are managed this way. Others, like Novikov Group and Rappoport, give more autonomy to each individual restaurant. 

Typically, the bigger the group, the more commercially driven it is, meaning more big brands on the lists, less freedom for sommeliers and a smaller selection for the guests. Just as in the off-trade business there’s clearly a connection between how much the restaurant owner knows and cares about wine and the freedom of the sommelier, who is perceived to play a major part in building the venue’s image. For example, the four restaurants of Aram Mnatsakanov in St Petersburg, plus his Probka in Moscow, are significant. Mnatsakanov is personally deep into wine, which is not always the case with restaurant owners. Dmitry Blinov’s restaurants in St Petersburg, including Harvest, Duo and others, are a showcase for more obscure varieties and less commercial wines.  

In Moscow, Sergey Aksenovsky is in charge of making strategic wine decisions for the important Dellos Group, which includes the famous Café Pushkin, Shinok, Turandot, Fahrenheit and others. The group is somewhat conservative, but regularly updates wine lists, exactly as clients demand it. He and his team are investing time and energy into tastings with wine importers and producers and self-education. He also oversees the wine lists of the Pushkin restaurants in Paris and Dubai.

Roman Smirnov is a chef-sommelier for Ginza, one of the biggest restaurant groups in Russia. Although Ginza was born in St Petersburg, it’s also a major player on the Moscow on-trade scene. 

A major restaurant of note is White Rabbit, currently number 13 on San Pellegrino’s The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, where Roman Romanov offers the many international tourists an extensive wine list. White Rabbit is part of the Twins Group, owned by twin chefs Sergey and Ivan Berezutskiy; Twins Garden is listed at number 19. Sommelier Anton Panasenko oversees lists for Twins Garden as well as for the Wine & Crab restaurant and Twins Wine Space. 

Another young and dynamic wine executive is Elena Lebedeva, chef sommelier of the Perelman People Group, which owns venues I Like Wine, I Like Grill, Beer & Brut and Ryba Moya. Her choices for the wine lists for these crowded venues reflect the young, hipster bent of Vladimir Perelman, the group’s owner.

Elizaveta Stakhanova owns several excellent wine places in Moscow, including Wine Religion  Wine & Gastro Bar, while Ilya Tyutenkov is the owner of high-end Uilliam’s and Ugolek restaurants, where he chooses the wines he likes himself. Galina Budnikova, a former barista, manages a short but interesting wine list at the high-end Coffeemania chain of casual restaurants, where Riesling producers have a better chance of being listed.

On the other side of the wine buying spectrum are independent consultants like Vlada Lesnichenko, a self-made professional who manages the wine lists of more than ten restaurants in Moscow. Her lists are always full of interesting, often biodynamic, wines and bottles from smaller producers across the globe. 

Although Moscow and St Petersburg dominate, a passion for wine is also clear at restaurants in Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk and Kazan. The former Olympic capital Sochi also seems to be finally waking up.

Anton Moiseenko

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