Home > The Magazine > Features

Sunday 5 July 2009

Subscribe now

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz Suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Will we betray Georgia?

Susan Richards

Wednesday, 14th June 2006

Susan Richards says that the Russian ban on Georgian wine is a whisper of the tensions that could turn into a roar — a Great Game for the 21st century

The drink of choice for Russia’s thriving new middle class is Georgian wine. They love to celebrate with a buxom Kindzmarauli or a dry Saperavi. The trouble is, there is just not enough of it. The shortage has been met in the old Soviet way — by counterfeiters: up to 80 per cent of Georgian wine sold in Russia is apparently fake. This is ostensibly why Russia’s chief public health official banned imports a month ago.

The scale of the counterfeiting scams in former Soviet territory is certainly vast, as is Russia’s alcohol problem. It is a major factor in Russia’s catastrophic demographic decline. Last year more than 40,000 Russians died of alcohol poisoning alone. But the ban will not address the problem. For while Georgia has been clamping down on the fakers, Russia has not. Last year, Georgia’s Mukuzani region produced grapes enough for 1.4 million bottles a year; ten million bearing that label were on sale in Russia. Most of these were produced north of the border, concocted out of vodka or moonshine. Those are the killers.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Susan Richards | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Subscribe Now 12 issues for £12 in the UK : Gift subscriptions : Overseas subscriptions

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Labour’s U-turn on social housing for non-immigrants is welcome but too late

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNP

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme

A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

Deborah Ross

In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop

What Jacko needed was someone to say ‘No’

Uri Geller

My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie.

Michael Jackson Notebook

Emily Maitlis

The news cycle of a dead celebrity is a curious thing.

Nato has serious supply problems in Afghanistan

Jon Boone

Jon Boone says that Nato plans to get military supplies in through Tajikistan could draw the former Soviet colony into the battle as Cambodia was dragged into the Vietnam war