Russian Winery Experience you won’t forget.
After our visit to Sauk Dere winery I was asked to write an email to the owners with my impressions of the experience and state why they SHOULD NOT invest much money in the place – how often does that happen?
Wine enthusiasts and travelers see a lot of wineries, often historic or very beautiful, or with huge investments in infrastructure or technology that impresses. Sauk Dere makes a very strong impression for other reasons!
VIK winery it isn’t! But very interesting and memorable it is.
The front of this Russian winery reflects the stereotype that I have of Soviet-era buildings; angular, industrial, and functional and as we walked up to the entrance I felt slightly apprehensive, it isn’t a welcoming building and I was imagining someone firing a warning shot. Obviously, that didn’t happen!
We didn’t have an appointment and Max, the owner of our local partner tour company, was not very confident they would let us look around. “It is not the way things are done in Russia”, he said. I am used to rocking-up to wineries and explaining who I am and what I am doing, 95% of the time people let me in, Max thought this wouldn’t fly here.
A very stern woman on security eyed us suspiciously but with Max using his charm, and us talking English between us we got her interested enough to call someone, who called someone, who looked at a clipboard, and eventually, a lovely lady came down to talk to us.
It turns out that Marina is the Commercial Director for the winery so we were in excellent hands, plus she speaks English very well indeed. We explained a little more about how I am trying to promote Russian wine tours and always looking to include unusual wineries, so could we have a quick look around? Certainly, she said and took us down into the bowels of the Earth.
The buildings above ground and the tunnels which now form the cellars have not had much work done on them for decades. Pipes, wires, and bits of old equipment litter the place, Marina walked us along dark tunnels to show us the hundreds of bottles that are stored down there as a kind of museum. Jancis Robinson walked these same cellars in 2009 and had much the same impressions as we did, she commented on how memorable the whole experience was. The collection is very impressive and a real slice of Soviet history, how well the wine is preserved remains to be seen (or tasted).
Read some of Jancis Robinson´s expert comments on the Sauk Dere winery
There are dozens of old cast-iron tanks and huge wooden casks in these cellars. As you can see from the photos they are being used, well some of them at least, as we saw people working on them. The whole impression is one of stepping back in time 50 years, a snapshot of the way things were in Soviet times when low quality, high volume wine was the order of the day. The style of the corridors and tunnels, the type of tiles and furnishings, all added to the impression of being in a cold war movie.
After wandering underground at the Sauk Dere winery and viewing these thousands of bottles, stored down there for decades, it was up into the light to see the modern part of the winery. Stainless tanks, a lab, a modern bottling and packing line, and other very familiar modern equipment were in evidence. There were lots of quirky things along the way, such as an iron tank graveyard, and the whole experience is one that any wine lover will remember for a long time. There are tangible and intangible things that strike you as you look around, this is definitely something you should do while in this wine region.
P.S. We didn’t do a tasting at Sauk Dere as we had arrived unannounced but obviously our clients will have a premium tasting included so you can try the fruits of these labors.
