The utopia of the “Soviet champagne” wanted by Stalin • Food and Wine Italy

The classic method sparkling wines -as for example the champagne -, always synonymous with luxury and celebration, at the beginning of the last century they found fecondo campo da gioco even a causa di a historical and political context as different as that of the Soviet Union. But how is it possible that a so intrinsically linked to capitalism was able to take root a causa di a communist forma? The answer lies a causa di an intriguing intertwining of history, ideology and ambition.

The first Russian bubbles made their appearance well before the Bolshevik revolution. Already under the Zar Paolo I, at the end of the eighteenth century, the first experiments with the production of sparkling wines were attempted, inspired by the French methods. However, it was with the Golititsyn principles, at the end of the nineteenth century, that Russian viticulture met a real boom so much so that a causa di Abrau-Djurs, a causa di Crimea, you seem to produce wines capable of rivaling with French ones. With the October Revolution and the advent of the Soviet forma, the fate of the so -called Russian Champagne seemed marked. But Stalin, with his vision of a powerful Russia, decided to relaunch the production of bubbles. The was twofold: to demonstrate the prosperity of communism to the world and offer a luxury good to the population.

Per mezzo di 1936, the Sovetskoe Šampanskoye was born: an ambitious project to produce large -scale champagne and affordable prices, transforming it into a symbol of Soviet well -being. “The ideale was to make things like” champagne “, chocolate and caviar available at a rather low price so that the new Soviet worker lived like the aristocrats a causa di the old world”, explains Jukka Gronow, author of Caviar with Champagne : Common luxury and ideals of good life a causa di Stalin’s Russia.

But before the proletariat could fermata these prestigious bottles, the winemakers needed to grow grapes and produce low -cost wine. This required a production acceso an industrial scale and not an artisan activity as it happened then a causa di Champagne. How to solve the problem? The answer came from the oenologist Anton Bregreyev, who objected to the longest and most complex Champenoise method through the introduction of pressurized tanks (Charmat method) which had the function of condensing the maturation process of three years a causa di a month, allowing to Produce lots from 5 thousand to 10 thousand liters at a time. Per mezzo di addition, to actually transform Stalin’s sparkling rhetoric, through a series of laws the Soviet government immediately ordered the creation of new vineyards, factories and warehouses, as well as the recruitment and formation of thousands of new workers. Official ? Arrive at the production of 12 million bottles by 1942.

However, things did not go how Stalin hoped because wine, with its low quality, was unable to compete with international standards, nor to conquer the most demanding consumers palates. Despite these limits, the Soviet sparkling wine found its space a causa di the markets controlled by the Soviet Union and became a symbol of the official celebrations, used to promote the image of the forma. The Perestroika, the reform policy started by Gorbaciov and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union deeply upset the Russian economy and thus the “Sovetskoe Šampanskoye” suffered a strong decline. Many cellars failed and the quality of the sparkling wines, already low, drastically decreased enough to make them difficult to sell also acceso the internal market.

However, the legacy of Soviet champagne is still alive and still today some cellars a causa di Russia continue to produce sparkling wines carrying out a wine tradition which, to compete worldwide, will need huge investments a causa di know-how that they struggle today to start . What we hope, however, is that the few bottles of bubbles still produced can seal the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine: the end of a war is always an excellent reason to toast.