JS on Moscow: keep or drink?
I assume that being a freelancer is just as different from working for the most respected wine magazine in the world as playing in Bolshoi Theatre is different from street performance. At the same time I am very sure that doing things on his own — as James Suckling does nowadays — makes him a lot happier. For his recent (and short) visit to Moscow he came invited by one of the leading wine importing companies.
Only two short posts on his web-site covered this trip to the Russia’s capital. It was great to meet James at Grand Cru wine bar in the city center and watch him talking en vivo. Though I am a bit surprised by what he wrote in his blog.
First of all, he says that the estimated number of fine wine drinkers in Moscow is 2 million. This is an obvious and heavy exaggeration — one can expect there are about 2 m occasional cheap plonk wine drinkers in Moscow who don’t tell their red from white and prefer 200 rubles wines (about $5) from Tertapaks. This I can imagine. But would anyone go that far to call this category of people ‘fine wine drinkers’? Note that the estimated population of Moscow is almost 12 m people which means that in James’s point of view (well, that’s the way he was informed) exactly 1/6 of all the Moscow population drinks fine wines. This is of course far from reality or Moscow would have become a new Hong Kong a long time ago.
In 2005 I asked for the estimation like that a well-known person in the restaurant business Alexander Smelaynskiy and his reply was that about 300 000 people in Moscow could be called fine wine drinkers. Which takes us to 1/40 or 2,5% of the city population. Ok, almost seven years passed and many more people know much more about wine and do go traveling but still not so much more earn enough to buy fine stuff, especially if we take into account that wines tend to cost 2-3 times higher after being brought to Russia. The 2008 recession had a dramatic impact on finer wines consumption. Optimistically speaking I believe no more than 3-5 percent of Moscow population could be called fine wine drinkers and potential drinkers. We are talking about 600 000 tops, but this figure seems exaggerated too.
In his blog James also noted that the wine prices in Moscow restaurants are a big problem specifying 3-4 times markups. But at the same time he says that the same problem he saw in the US. I believe that we should stop whining about high markups and prices for wine in Russia. Remember — everything costs much more in Russia than in Europe or anywhere else if it’s an imported product. Cars, clothes are good examples. That’s why people who earn enough prefer to buy clothes at rebajas and soldis. Yes, restaurant prices could be a little lower if the margins were not so big, but restaurant are the same businesses as any other.
On the contrary James speaks romantically about Russian sommeliers who «are looking for interesting wines full of character from honest and determined wine producers». I’d love this sweet picture to be true, but if you talk to any restaurant department of any wine importing company you will hear the stories of sold wine lists and sommeliers’ and restaurants managers’ greed and passion for… money. Wine is still not a passion but a money-making instrument and there is a long way to go and great deal of work to be done by everybody for that to change. There are exceptions, of course.
I cannot blame James for being optimistic about the Moscow wine scene. At last, two days are far from enough to understand anything that is taking place here neither he had a chance to speak to more people apart from journalists whose understanding of the scale of his figure was mostly far from bene. He is a freelancer and he is taking his great risks of doing business in emerging markets and I hope he is taking great margins too.
AM
