At last – “Russia will reduce bulk wine imports by up to 80% in volume this year”, – says today’s Decanter news.

I hardly can think if this is good or bad for Russia. On one hand, we are so tired of Russia-bottled pseudo-Russian wines filled with cheap Argentine and Chilean plonk and this natural reduction of bulk wine imports could be good for the Russian wine industry. On the other hand, how will Russian drinkers and importers fill the gap? Without proper wine education programs and the government support encouriging people to drink wines, will we see any good outcome?

Here is what they wrote:

“Last year Russia was the number one market for Argentina’s bulk wines, importing just over 93m litres. This year it will probably take less than 30m, Exequiel Barros of Buenos Aires-based analysts Caucasia Wine Thinking said. But even that might be optimistic: exports to Russia in the first six months of 2009 have only reached 12.73m litres.

Argentinian producers blame a number of factors including higher bulk prices, unfavourable exchange rates and lack of government support.

‘Brazil has increased its bulk sales to Russia, motivated by government incentives,’ said Sebastian Acosta of Terrasur, a Mendoza producer.

From the Russian side, much depends on a combination of which supplier is currently in favour – Moldova is back, Georgia’s still out – and oil prices.

In 2008 Argentina and Spain supplied 70% of the Russian market with hundreds of millions of litres of bulk wine, filling a gap left after Moldovan wine imports were banned from 2006 to late 2007.

This trade has been badly hit by the recession and the drop in oil prices. ‘The Russians just didn’t appear this year,’ said Susana Balbo, president of Wines of Argentina.

Most of the Russian bulk buyers are now in deep crisis, said Bisso Atanassov, editor of Simple Wine News, and Moldova is increasing pressure to buy previously unsold wines, which are of low quality but ‘at a fraction of a euro, they are flying of the shelves.’

Bottled and packaged wine exports for the first half of 2009 are still bucking the trend, up 11% in volume and 9% in value according to provisional industry figures”.