News

January 28, 2010

Putting A Cork In It – The Russian Wine Ripoff, Or What A Kremlin Sobriety Will Cost

By John Helmer in Moscow

Russia’s anti-trust buster, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), has established a record of making much ado about little; and of regulating only those corners of the Russian market where no oligarch-sized interest is threatened – unless the threat is pre-authorized by the Kremlin’s running orders. But this week the agency announced there is one Russian trust it feels on safe ground challenging -- Russia’s wine importers.

If they are about to be busted, this could be a regime-change for the way Russians have been obliged to get drunk since the combination of Gorbachev temperance, and Yeltsin rouble-crash caused vodka bingeing to replace most forms of civilized tippling.

According to the official press release of January 22, the FAS “has started researching the structure of the market of imported bottled grape wine and the conditions for product movement from the importers to the end consumer. An...