Financial crisis and wine export

Wine exports from Georgia, which have already reduced since 2006, when Russia placed its embargo on Georgian wine, are facing yet more problems due to the world financial crisis.

After losing the Russian market Georgia desperately began looking for new ones, but although some progress was made initially this has halted. In the first four months of 2009 wine export decreased by 28% compared with the same period last year. This was mainly due to a decrease in exports to Ukraine, where 55% of exports went in 2008.

Georgia exported more than 12 million bottles of wine last year, 6,474,668 to Ukraine, over a million to Kazakhstan, 900,000 to Belarus, 800,000 to Latvia, 600,000 to Poland, half a million to the USA, 249,000 to Lithuania, 156,000 to Israel and 146,000 to Germany. Georgian wine makers think that concentrating on the Russian market was a mistake to begin with and are planning to intensify the search for new markets.