Micro-Winery

We met Alexey Tolstoy and tasted his wine at his friend Guennadi’s Semigorie winery (I reserved my tasting notes of his wine for this story). This was also for us a very happy moment and a savoury example of what some Russian winemakers could produce if left free reins by the administration and the lawmakers. Man, this wine was so delicious and easy to swallow ! We're far from what people think of when we say Russian wine...

Alexey Tolstoy vinified his first personal vintage in his garage last year (2009), and that's what we tasted. This wine was a success for a first try : silky, with deep jellied-fruits aromas, relatively high in alcohol but such an easy drink ! We took his contact info with the hope to visit him a few days later. We did visit him the following week and see his garage winery (his "winery" is really in a garage, so his car stays outside...) as he invited us for dinner. He and his wife are not only excellent winemakers (yes ! she is also an enologist !), they are very nice people and I'm very happy to have met them.

First, I found the location of his house particularly ironic : it sits along maybe 8 other houses in a quiet corner of a derelict-looking winery dating from the soviet era See this picture of the gate above, this is really surrealist, I always find some beauty in those old soviet industrial structures with always the tubes in the frame.... Just think that this winery has facilities and buildings making a total surface of 7 hectares (that’s what I’d call a kombinat !) for a vineyard surface making today some 500 hectares.

The name of this sovkhoz winery which is still operating is Varenikovski Vinzavod Sovkhoza Gorni (варениковский визавод совхоза горный). Alexei and his family just happen to live there but his has no relation whatsoever with this winery. Otherwise, the village of Varenikoskaya, which sits in the flatland along the Kuban river north of Anapa and Krimsk, is an old Cossack outpost (Stanitsa).

Alexei Tolstoi has several generations of winemakers behind him. He is currently working for Russkaya Loza, a big winery of the region, and he is one of these knowledgeable winery executives who begin to consider making wine with a different approach that the one that they experience through their job. By the size and the vinification style, we can say that there are light years between the large industrial winery and the one they’re privately quietly setting up on a miniature scale. But everything important when you make real wine is there : a good selection of grapes, a delicate winemaking without additives, and passion. That’s usually a good recipe for wines you’re happy to swallow without restraint...

Alexey and his wife Marina attended the winemaking department of the Agriculture University in Krasnodar. Krasnodar is the only place where you can learn winemaking in Russia. While Marina now teaches winemaking at the University, Alexey has held several jobs after studying in this Agri University from 1995 to 2000 : he was one of the people who took part in the creation of Soyuz Vino (союз вино), a major industrial winery of the region. This industrial winery, which made its first vintage in 2005, is one of the mass bottlers of Russia, with a yearly output of 4 million liters.

Alexey left Soyuz Vino after 3 years and a half for another industrial winery, Russkaya Loza, where he manages the bottling department. His employers know that he's making wine artisanally at home and it's OK for them.


Like some of his peers, Alexei Tolstoi understands that there’s an other life beyond industrial winemaking, and he bought a few winery tools & containers, purchased selected grapes here and there and made his own experiment, adding his wine-education knowledge to the experience learnt from his childhood contact with winemaking in the backyard. This family winemaking which has been going on unreported all over the region during the soviet years may be yielding now some interesting consequences : some people have retained the love for artisanal winemaking and want to experience it openly.

Alexei travelled extensively through other countries with an old wine culture, including France, Spain and Italy, and he is aware of the organic management, including the biodynamic one, while making no mention of the natural-wine ways on the vinification side, but his wine is indded made without additives and without SO2.


Late harvest (october 26), 9 months in Caucasian oak. Malolactic fermentation made. Will be bottled next december and stay 6 months in bottles before beginning drinking. Silky, delicious wine with concentrated cooked-fruits aromas. Lightly perly on the tongue. He says that he keeps the stems when they are ripe.

What else can I say ? That's very good stuff. You know, sometimes I was wondering, like : I'm maybe influenced by the fact that I don't drink many really good wines around here, and these wines aren't maybe that good. Alexey happened to offer us two bottles, one for my friends, and the other for me, and I transported it carefully back to France. I opened it a couple days ago and drank it with B. That was gooood, I can tell you, and my impression back in Russia was justified, B. agreed about it, and something we also noted here was the very nice length in the mouth.

We finished the bottle this very evening (well, I must admit that altogether, I'm the one who drank most of the wine), and by coincidence, I was floating in the heavenly clouds of this Russian natural wine when I learnt that Marcel Lapierre had died the previous night....


Source : wineterroir

See also : hanamasa, sour sally