When Sergiy Klimov speaks about wine, his excitement is infectious, even to those with a less than sophisticated palate.
Since 2014, Klimov has championed Ukrainian-made wine in numerous ways.
He runs a chain of wine bars in the capital city, Kyiv, stocking only Ukrainian-produced wine. He is an ambassador for Ukrainian wine, promoting it overseas. And now he has his own vineyard in the village of Zarichanka in western Ukraine, where he experiments with grape cultivation and the winemaking process.
Through sharing Ukrainian-made wine, Klimov feels he is preserving and building on a tradition connected to his ancestral land for thousands of years.
“It became my mission,” he said. “I want to bring revolution to the industry.”
Alongside its neighbors Moldova and Romania, and the wider region’s Georgia and Azerbaijan, Ukraine has been fertile winemaking ground for millennia. Archaeological digs have unearthed ancient Greek winemaking vessels, while fossilized remains of grape species found during other excavations date back to the 11th to 9th centuries BC.
Perhaps most famously, Crimea was home to vineyards which sat at the foot of the southern peninsula’s mountains. After Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 many of the vineyards were lost and, in some cases, were mined and destroyed by Russian forces, said Anna Eugenia Yanchenko, a Ukrainian cultural scientist, sommelier, and wine researcher specializing in the history of her country’s wine.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its forces have destroyed more wineries, including Château Kurin in the south and ARTWINERY in the eastern city of Donetsk, Yanchenko said. Others, like the southern vineyard Prince Trubetskoy Winery and the Kyiv region’s Wineidea, experienced periods of occupation.
The country’s winemaking capacity was significantly reduced as a result – but Klimov and others are determined to keep the industry not just alive but thriving.
Their efforts are motivated in part by a desire to strengthen Ukrainian national identity in the face of Russia’s efforts to deny their country’s sovereignty.
Now based in Warsaw, Poland, Yanchenko says little is known about who originally planted grapes millennia ago in what is now Ukraine, but that what matters is that it happened and that production continues.
“Since winemaking appeared, the process of cultivating grapes and wine consumption has never ended here,” she said.
Another champion for the industry is Tania Olevska, who left Ukraine for London in July 2022, five months after Russia’s full-scale invasion. Having worked in the wine industry for some years in her native Ukraine, she decided to establish Ukrainian Wines Company UK, focused on importing Ukrainian wines to Britain. She attends wine fairs and exhibitions that winemakers who remain in Ukraine now struggle to get to.
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