Sawt Falasteen - Ukraine winemakers defy war to make a splash at home

Nestled on the western borderlands of the war-torn country, the sunlit slopes of the wine-growing Zakarpattia region have largely escaped the fighting that has ravaged other parts of the country.

But with power cuts and labour shortages crippling production capacity, the impact of the war has seeped into the daily reality at Chizay, one of the country's most well known producers.

"We believe and hope that we'll get through this winter somehow thanks to alternative sources of electricity," Dmytro Sholudko, the winery's director, told AFP.

A steady supply of power is vital for the air conditioners maintaining the right temperature inside Chizay's storage rooms.

Spacious, chilly and cloaked in an earthy scent, they hold hundreds of oak barrels and several towering steel tanks full of maturing wine.

- 'We need hands' -

The war, now well into its fifth year, has not spared Ukraine's wine industry, located in the west like Zakarpattia but also in the east or in the south around Odesa.

Vineyards have been destroyed or occupied, including in Russia-annexed Crimea, and winemakers have been killed.

A Russian strike on the Kyiv region this month damaged a warehouse of the OKWINE chain of wine shops, inflicting losses it estimated at around $13.5 million.

With hundreds of thousands of men drafted to fight, labour shortages are also hitting the sector.

"We've just started the harvest season, and we very much need hands, but it's very hard to find them," Sholudko said.

Every year, Chizay needs around 110 seasonal workers to hand-pick grapes on its vast estate of 270 hectares (660 acres) of vines stretching across rolling hills.

Chizay produces 1.3 million bottles a year, mostly from its white Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat and Riesling grapes.

Its signature wine is made of another white grape, Furmint, rich and gold in colour with a dried apricot aroma.

But the white wine dominance could soon change -- threatened not by the war, but by climate change.

"People would always say that Zakarpattia is a land of white wines," said Gennadiy Vachylia, Chizay's 32-year-old director of viticulture.

When AFP visited, he was climbing through rows of vines winding up the hill, collecting samples to test their ripeness.

Rising temperatures are bringing the harvest season forward by two to three days each year.

"With global warming the potential has opened up for red wines as well," he told AFP.

- 'Cradle' of winemaking -

Internationally, Ukraine hardly has the reputation of a winemaking powerhouse.

It exports around $11 million of wine a year -- a large chunk to neighbouring Romania -- according to industry and official figures cited in Ukrainian media.

Imports, meanwhile, top $200 million.

But at home, enthusiasts are touting a boom in domestic production.

"We send our wine to various competitions so that not only in Ukraine but also in the world people can see that Ukrainian wine has the same quality, and in some cases even higher quality, than some foreign wines," said Zoltan Udvargelyi, Chizay's head winemaker.

At a trendy wine bar in Kyiv, locals pop by to sip Zakarpattia whites or get a bottle of wine into the late summer evening.

Its owner Sergiy Klimov, who has put a yellow-and-blue flag at the bar's wall, sells only Ukrainian vintages.

"Ukraine is one of the cradles of world winemaking," Klimov said, even though during the Soviet era factories churned out "wine of almost zero quality".

"Today I see a boom in Ukrainian wineries," he said, noting that from full-bodied reds in the south to the crisp whites of the west, "our terroirs and climate are incredibly diverse".

At Chizay, dozens of Ukrainian tourists recently joined a guided tour and tasting.

"We are seeing that more and more people are actually choosing Ukrainian products –- whether out of patriotism, curiosity or a desire for quality," said Sholudko, the director.

On the day Russia invaded, they had planned to produce a first batch of a new sparkling wine. Only 10 people among its staff of a few dozen showed up to work.

But, he said, "we got up and, with these 10 people, we set about making the sparkling wine".

W.Mansour--SF-PST