In 2021, six regional unions of small winemakers in Transkarpathians united to form the Association of Winegrowers, Winemakers and Distillers ‘Wines of the Silver Land’. Most winemakers are people in their 50s and 60s who had no special education and made wine the way their grandparents and great-grandparents taught them.
“We then realised that the first thing we needed was knowledge,” says Oleksandr Garnovdiy, the Association’s chairman. – “With the help of FAO, and then IPRSA (the EU project “Institutional Policy Reform for the Development of Smallholder Agriculture in Ukraine”), we started training winemakers. In 2023, we held three stages of training, and in 2024, the training is held monthly. What did it bring? A huge leap in quality already in the first year”.
The Association began to develop the scientific component of winemaking and now cooperates with six faculties of Uzhhorod National University and Odesa Technological University, involving wine technology, biology, history and foreign economic affairs students. The Association have applied for a geographical indication ‘Wines of the Silver Land’, which will identify not only the wines but also the Transcarpathian region itself.
The Transcarpathian Association of Winemakers is working to create a joint platform with winemakers from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Eastern Austria, Hungary, Northern Croatia and Slovenia, where winemaking conditions and technologies are similar.
To launch the platform, winemakers from these countries have been invited to the tasting table of the Geographical Indications Wine Competition this year, as well as to the first international conference in Ukraine.
Oleksandr notes that winemakers are usually self-sufficient in implementing their plans and can help themselves, but now, when there are almost no tourists and the chorika is practically not operating, it is difficult for them to sell their products. Yet the door to state support and loans is closed to winemakers because of a legal incident: on the one hand, the law on grapes and grape wine classifies winemakers as food producers, but the law on alcoholic beverages classifies them as producers of alcoholic beverages. This contradicts the European classification of wine as a food product.
The association is actively working in a working group drafting a law on grapes and grape wine, as well as on filling in the grape and wine cadastre, which is being formed according to European standards and will track wine from grape planting to bottle. In other words, European legislation is already being gradually implemented, and by 2028, Mr. Garnovdiy is confident that the association’s winemakers will be ready to work within EU standards.
This article prepared in the frame of “Green and inclusive agricultural policy – steps towards” project implementing by ICO IC «Green Dossier» with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project.
Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.
