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Wine "Alushta" (red table wine)

Wine "Alushta" (vintage red table wine) is a rare, exquisite, delicate red table wine of Crimea, the creation of which a popular legend links to Prince Lev Golitsyn and the Alushta winemakers, although the official standard of this wine-and-gastronomy masterpiece was developed in the middle of the 20th century.

Overview

The red table wine "Alushta" is a unique achievement of Crimean winemaking. Due to the specific soils and climate of mountainous and foothill Crimea, European varietal vines overwhelmingly produced fortified or dessert wines of the "Lafite" profile rather than light dry table wines of the Bordeaux or Rhine type. Raising a fine, delicate dry red wine under such conditions was considered the highest expression of a winemaker's skill.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • The legend of Golitsyn and the name: According to folk legend, the Alushta winemakers presented Prince Lev Golitsyn with a red table wine as an apprentice work for attaining the rank of master, a wine that connoisseurs could not distinguish from the finest French Bordeaux. When the maestro was offered to call it "Southern Coast Bordeaux," Golitsyn proclaimed his famous formula: "Grape and wine are a product of the variety and the locality!" — and insisted on an honest name after the place of origin: "Bordeaux is in France, in Crimea — Alushta."
  • Official history and standard: In reality, the official standard for the vintage red table wine "Alushta" was developed much later — in the middle of the 20th century (around the 1940s). The wine was produced in limited quantities and almost never reached the shelves of ordinary shops, being distributed to elite wine cellars and special reserves.
  • The incident at "Artek": The wine "Alushta" is associated with a behind-the-scenes legend about French pioneers who, during their stay at the international camp "Artek," demanded a wine beverage with their lunch, as tradition dictated. The administration provided them precisely the dry vintage wine "Alushta."
  • The wild vine of Taurica and terroir: In the context of the wine's history, a naturalist hypothesis is mentioned that the mountain forests of Taurica (Crimea) are the only place in the Old World where a wild vine — the ancestor of the Old World's varietal grapes with round red berries — grew in nature.

Contradictions and Open Questions

  • Dating of creation and authorship: The legend links the appearance of the wine directly to Prince Lev Golitsyn at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, yet the documented technological standard for the vintage wine "Alushta" was developed and implemented by the enterprises of "Massandra" only in the 1940s.