Wine Diplomacy. How Does Good Wine Unite the World?

One of the most popular Victorian novelists, the Englishman Charles Dickens, loved fine Italian wine. Every year he spent a whopping £15,000 on this drink, which is equivalent to about £2 million today. The British love of good wine is so obvious that it comes as no surprise that London traditionally hosts one of the most prominent wine events.

This year, 13 thousand collectors, sommeliers, buyers and people with good taste gathered in London at the largest wine conference London Wine Fair 2023. For 41 years in a row, this event has maintained its brand as a unique platform where the world's best wines are tasted, trends are set and innovations in the industry are discussed. It also determines what wine connoisseurs will be hunting for this year.

This year's London Wine Fair took place at the Olympia exhibition center in mid-May. After years of restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was clear that the industry missed such events. Besides tasting outstanding wines from around the world, visitors also had a unique networking opportunity.

Updated exposition at London Wine Fair 2023

In 2023, the number of exhibitors increased by 30%. The fair featured more than 400 top wine exhibitors including British agents such as Enotria&Coe, Felix Solis Avantis, Hatch Mansfield, ABS and Seckford Wines, well-known global brands such as Babylonstoren, Canned Wine Company, Cramele Recas and Trapiche and numerous market leaders from France, Italy and Spain.

The exposition included several main zones – Esoterica, a zone with exclusive wines presented by the best British specialized importers, Wines Unearthed, which focused on wines that had never been imported to the UK before, Drinks Britannia – a zone that incorporated the best samples of craft beverages, and also the newly created Mindful Drinking Experience zone, the concept of which was developed after a sharp increase in the popularity of low and no alcohol drink.

“It was a wonderful fair, fruitful and interesting, a great opportunity to renew ties with colleagues and contacts. I came with a plan and, as always, was distracted - in a good way - from it many times,” said Victoria Moore, wine editor, The Daily Telegraph

Organic, biodynamic and natural wines characterized by low or no chemical impurities, have traditionally dominated the discussion due to the complexity of producing "natural" wines, which means avoiding the addition of impurities both during fermentation at the winery and at the stage of growing raw materials in the vineyard fields. This approach requires great skill and precision, as the risks of breaking the technology and producing cloudy wines with a bacterial flavor are very high.

New stars of Eastern and Central Europe

This year, special attention is being paid to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which have traditionally been in the shadows: Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Moldova and Ukraine.

Thus, this year, for the first time in history, Ukrainian producers got their own Wines of Ukraine stand. The best still and sparkling wines made from unique local and European grape varieties grown in Ukraine were highly praised by importers and distributors.

This year, 10 wine companies took part in the London Wine Fair 2023:

• 46 Parallel Wine Group (Odesa region)
• Beykush Winery (Mykolaiv region)
• Biologist Craft Winery (Kyiv region)
• Bolgrad / Alcoline (Odesa region)
• Chateau Chizay (Transcarpathia)
• Father’s Wine VB (Ternopil region)
• Graevo (Zaporizhzhia)
• My Wine by Eduard Gorodetsky (Odesa region)
• Stakhovsky Wines (Transcarpathia)
• Villa Tinta (Odesa region / Southern Bessarabia).

The stand, located in the heart of LWF, was a great success, also due to its wide range - from entry-level drinks to expensive limited wines from internationally recognized companies such as Shabo, Prince Trubetskoi Winery, Medovyi Barsuk (Honey Badger), Beikush, and 46 Parallel.

According to Tetiana Olevska, founder of the Kyiv Wine Cup blind tasting project:

The choice of Ukrainian producers impressed experts and connoisseurs. All the companies presented their best wines, novelties, and collection wines. Ukraine is rich in flavors, and there is not a single wine that is alike.

Ukrainian indigenous varieties, Telti-Kuruk, Sukholimansky, Citron Magaracha and Odesa Black were also in great demand.

"The interest in Ukraine and Ukrainian wines at the London Wine Fair  is simply amazing, and we have a lot of work to do at our stand. We are happy to have the opportunity to communicate with experts and buyers from the UK and other countries. This is not just curiosity: we hope to expand exports, find new partners and distributors. We are very pleased that the quality and unique character of Ukrainian wines are admired by experts. I am once again proud of our team. I have great respect for all the winemakers for such a friendly atmosphere. I am grateful to my Ukrainian colleagues who came from different parts of the UK to work at our stand and make people fall in love with Ukrainian wine! I am proud of everyone, I love my Ukraine infinitely, because we are really incredible!" shared her impressions Svitlana Tsybak, representative of Wines of Ukraine, Head of the Association of Craft Winemakers of Ukraine and Development Director of Beykush Winery.

This inspiring enthusiasm is easy to understand: many Ukrainian producers with vineyards in southeastern Ukraine have miraculously managed to save their facilities and harvest during the full-scale Russian invasion.

For example, the Ochakivskyi district, where the Beykush winery is located, has been under continuous shelling since the beginning of the invasion. Initially, it was impossible to get to the production site, and only two winemakers, Olha and Oleksandr, remained at the winery for monitoring the condition of the wines. Later, they were given access, and the team managed to harvest the 2022 vintage, which is now being sold for export.

Besides, Beykush wines have received numerous awards, including three silver and one gold medal at the most influential tasting competition Decanter World Wine Awards in London. So did all the samples of sparkling wines from 46 Parallel that received medals at the London Wine Competition, as well as SHABO Muscat Ottonel Limited Edition Vintage Dessert 2016, which scored 97 points and received a platinum medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards, the world's most prestigious wine competition, becoming the first platinum award for Ukraine in the history of Decanter.

At the London Wine Fair, the SHABO family winery, a true flagship of Ukrainian winemaking and winner of the Wine Travel Awards in the category The Visiting Card of the Country, presented its wines at a separate stand.

Well, 2023 seems to have been a fruitful year for wine connoisseurs across the globe. New stands dedicated to countries whose wineries were previously underrepresented at the London Wine Fairhave opened up new opportunities not only for Eastern and Central European local producers, but also for connoisseurs. Many of them are likely to add titled newcomers to their collections this year - wines from Ukrainian producers who managed to keep their wineries alive despite massive shelling and war.