Icewine Tales

Icewine Guy Meets Svetlanas and The Soul of Abkhazia

I marvel that in the former Soviet Union there are a very large number of babies born named Svetlana.   It seems that half of the folks I met in or from the former Soviet Union countries are named Svetlana.  This makes it easier to remember names, but harder to talk about them.  “Svetlana from Moscow, Svetlana from St. Petersburg” is a distinction that must be made, but frankly that distinction is for my benefit.  They are all the same to the people around me in Canada, except for the three Svetlanas I know who live in my small area of Canada.

They do help me though with nicknames. Svetlana from Sukhumi prefers Sveta.  Svetlana from Novy Afon prefers Lana.  My close friend Svetlana from Tashkent prefers Svetlana, but I can get a rise out of her by calling her “sweaty Lana” and she replies with “Philsky”

Lana is the head of Abkhazia’s International Department.  She went to Moscow, took a University degree and began a rat race of a career in Moscow; a “good job”.  Then she decided that she should ‘downshift’ and come back to Abkhazia to work.  Her role in Akbhazia’s foreign ministry is underpaid, but she makes up for it teaching at the University.

Her English is exceptional, and when she started doing simultaneous translation between Minister of Agriculture and me, I was actually startled.  It didn’t take me long to get used watching the Russian language coming out of my mouth in deep and foreign tones and into my ears in her very feminine, perfect English lilt, but the first few sentences caught me off guard.

She offered to take me sightseeing, much like I take people here to Niagara Falls and I was thrilled to have a chance to see some of the tourist sights.   This area has a rich history.  This is the region where the earliest recorded winemaking has been discovered, about 7500 BC.  Schoolboys are taught about Jason and the Golden Fleece.  This is where Jason and the Argonauts came to find it.  It seems that lambs pelts are perfect for putting in mountain streams as they capture heavy gold particles in the wool and incidentally make a ‘golden fleece’. St. Peter (or locally called St. Simon) came here in 55AD and was killed near Novy Afon after a few years of hermitage.  Nearby are the largest caves in the world.  The New Athos Monastery is majestic on the nearby hill.

I’m not much of a tourist.  The world’s largest caves would be interesting if there were no guardrails or signs like, “This way to the egress”.

In my free time in Moscow I did not see Red Square for two reasons; I couldn’t figure out how to cross the road to get to it, and I wasn’t that motivated because everything I saw was interesting.  If you want a thrill ride in Moscow, I recommend Tim, my Georgian friend who drove me through the deserted streets around the Kremlin at 120 km at 3am in a mad burst of exhilaration.  We were both stone cold sober and perhaps next time I’ll see more of the Kremlin. I do recall my hands on the dashboard, gripping tightly. I did see the Kremlin from the across or along the river, but I was perched high up in a nightclub called Soho Rooms, getting to know some rather interesting people.

So where is the soul of this land?

I have decided that it was with Lana, walking through some delightful woods to a small cave which is a shrine to a saint who lived 2000 years ago.  We in the west typically call him St. Peter, but locally he is called by his birth name, St. Simeon.  Lana pointed out red spots in the river which appear magically and are said to be the blood of St. Simeon. The locals killed him for some reason and now they revere him.  The former Soviet world is full of such conundrums.

A garden of rocks sprouted out of nowhere.  The river begins at the foot of a high rock face, bubbling out of the ground.  It is clear and beautiful and there is no need for bottled water, drinking fountains, or pop stands.  It is fresh and drinkable.  In fact it stands out as beautiful tasting water, filtered through the Caucasus Mountains and popping up virtually untouched in the copse of trees at the foot of the cliff.

Novy Afon was missed by much of the destruction of the 1992 war so it remains reasonably pristine, but it joined the economic black hole that sucked in all of Abkhazia and it shows.   There are no bullet holes, and the huge Georgian monastery of New Athos was untouched, as tempting as a target it must have been, by both sides in 1992.

Everybody in Abkhazia, indeed, all of the rural Caucasus, makes their own wine.  Wine is the soul of hospitality among these incredibly hospitable people. Grape vines are trained up trees or trellises, harvest is done by hand, and fermentation happens in large clay pots that are buried in the ground in a shed as a natural form of climate control so the wine doesn’t overheat.  Beside the largest pot is the second largest pot, and beside that is the third largest pot, in a cascade of ever smaller pots sunk into the earth of the wine cellar.  The wine in the second smallest pot is poured into the next smaller and so on up to the largest pot to make room for the new harvest.  Presumably some is drunk from each vintage year and the finest wine is often in the smallest pot.

Before I left, I read in a cooking book that the name of these pots was “Kvevri”

I only saw one in Abkhazia, on that walk to the shrine.  It was turned over and we took pictures of each other standing beside it.

Lana was, I think pleased that I knew what it was, but she was sweet and patient but firm when she explained that “Kvevri” was the Georgian name and that the Abkhazian name was “Apshah”, which means something like “home of the soul”.

The only Ashrah I saw on this was upended, broken and would hold no souls. It was left on the side of a path on the way to a martyr’s shrine.

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Icewine Guy in Abkhazia

I wasn’t there to take in war stories.  The 16 year old bullet holes in the apartment buildings were grotesque to me, but people lived in them, and children grew up under the pocked walls that remind everyone that 16 years ago this was a war zone and almost was again in August 2008, and could be again.

On the way into Sukhumi Max pointed out the bridge over the Gumista river up ahead.  “That is where we stopped them in ‘92”.  “Then we went around the mountains and circled Sukhumi and they had to evacuate.”

In the 1992 war, a battalion of Chechnyan mercenaries were the sharp edge of Abkhazia’s defense and counter attack, and they were arranged by the Russians, and supplemented by the tiny Abkhazian army and militia.  Abkhazia had declared independence, and Georgia disagreed and sent troops in to re-take the territory.

In the encirclement, they almost caught Eduard Shevardnadze who was then Georgia’s president in Sukhumi.  He escaped by the skin of his teeth.

The geography of low tech war was simple.  The mountains were impassable.  The sea was controlled by the Georgian navy and air force. This left a slim flat area that land armies could fight over.  Flat streams that poured out of the Caucasus Mountains provided tactical obstructions every few miles.

The rocky flats of the Gumista River had been heavily mined to stop the Georgian advance. In just 2 years, Abkhazia became one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. It took 16 years of HALO to finally clear up most of the mines.

As we crossed the bridge, he pointed down to some woods on the north shore of the Gumista river.  “That’s where I was”, he said.

“But Max, you were 15 years old!” I blurted out.  I was looking at this man sitting beside me, trying to make a link between him and the scared 15 year old clutching an AK-47 and looking through the darkness at another army.  I could no more do this than I could reach my own young self at Trafalgar Square a few weeks before.

He nodded and we drove into Sukhumi, his home town.

Contact VinoCanada for Export of Icewines and Canadian Wine Exports at www.vinocanada.com

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I met Fred Weir at the Canadian Embassy Icewine tasting in Moscow in June.  Fred is a fellow Canadian who writes about Russia for Indian, Chinese, British and American newspapers, including the Christian Science Monitor.   We had just enough time for a friendly chat and connect before I stood up and served enough Icewine to Moscow’s wine elite to drop a diabetic elephant into a deep coma.

Seaside Cafe on the Black Sea

A couple of weeks later, I was walking the quiet and calm waterfronts of Sukhumi.  Max enjoys pop culture.  Over glasses of Abkhazian wine, lavash and great cheeses we talked about his country until the conversation drifted away, and then we shifted to talk of Hunter Thompson and Ralph Steadman or other Rolling Stone issues.  Max has an advantage in that while his country is isolated by the world, his work takes him abroad.   This and his American education give him a perspective that most Abkhazians would not see.   When I left, I gave Max a bottle of Dan Aykroyd Icewine.

Dan Aykroyd’s contribution to pop culture leaves an interesting patchwork.  In the Soviet Union, he is well known, but when I mentioned Dan Aykoryd, some would light up and say, “Ghostbusters!” and others would light up and say “Blues Brothers”.  This didn’t have so much to do with the age of the person I was talking to and I never did understand what made a Russian remember Ghostbusters over Blues Brothers or the other way around and not both.

I was thrilled about the Dan Aykroyd Icewine. When I shipped the samples to Moscow, it was a great tasting celebrity wine.  When I got there three weeks later, it had won Ontario’s “Wine of the Year”.  The medal and the recognition didn’t change the wine inside, but it was great to show that the home of Icewine was heaping honours on an Ontario boy and his wines.

A week later the prelude to August war between Abkhazia and their Russian protectors and Georgia started up in the form of car bombs, shootings and kidnappings.  A bomb went off in the market where I had so enjoyed looking for local foods to pair with the Icewines.   Another blast killed four people at a birthday party near the southern border.  Reporters were sent into Abkhazia to cover the war.

“They always want to cover the war,” I recall Max saying about the reporters, “but there is so much more going on here.”   But Max’s job was to meet with each of the media and he has presence so they all met him, usually followed by a pleasant but briefer and more formal meeting with Sergey Shamba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Max’s boss.

For me, a delightful punch line came in an email from Fred shortly after he visited Abkhazia.  Here it is in Fred’s own words,

“Yes, it’s a small world. I met at least two people down in Abkhazia who mentioned you. One of them was Max Gunjia, who started talking about ice wine in the midst of a political interview, then your name came up … Interesting place, Abkhazia;”

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The Long Pier at Sukhumi Bay

Part 1 left off with Max, Teddy, the Macedonian and I having dinner in a seaside cafe in Sukhumi.

During the dinner, Teddy invited me to visit the UNOMIG compound.  I grew up as an army brat and lived on army bases all my life but I knew that this, I knew was going to be a visit of a different kind.

As I passed through the guardhouse at the gates the guards searched my laptop computer bag carefully, and an escort took me to Teddy’s office about 4pm.

Somehow we ended up at the base bar.  The UNOMIG team is multinational. For example, their operating rules state that a four man observation team will take two trucks and that each of the four must be from different countries.  I recognized the some of the country flags on their shoulders but  Teddy made the introductions and ensured that I sat with beer in front of me and got to know his mates.  Of course as a Canadian Icewine salesman, I was the oddity and I sensed that oddities are better than television for these guys.

The American chided the Zimbabwean beside me for the fact that the Zimbabwe election results were mired in problems with counting ballots.  I leaned over and asked the American where he was from. “Florida”, he said.  What irony!  With rampant inflation the price of a bottle of Icewine in Zimbabwe currency was 1,174,000 dollars in July, 2008. The Zimbabwean took the brunt of the good natured jabs that day until the Australian, a larger than life caricature of an Australian, arrived to dish it out happily to everybody.

They were intensely curious about Icewine.  I passed around one 200ml bottle of Pillitteri Shiraz Icewine that would retail in Moscow for about $400.  They cradled it in reverence and when it had made it around the bar I asked if they would like to try some Icewine.  The thought of a $400 quarter bottle of wine had them intrigued and the talk evolved into arranging an Icewine tasting for the UNOMIG guys the following night.  I’m not sure whose idea it was, but I recall that Teddy kept a full beer in front of me the rest of the night.

Icewine, like all wines, is better paired with complementary food, good company and circumstance.   I had the wines that I had carried over three borders in my suitcase left over from Moscow wine tastings.  The company would be superb.  However, this wine tasting at the end of the world, in a place that sounded like a Harry Potter destination needed some food pairing.

The next day, Lana offered to show me around the Sukhumi market to pick up fruits and cheeses.

Lana is the head of the International Department in Akbhazia’s foreign affairs department.  Like many well educated Abkhazians, she took a degree in a Moscow university and worked in Moscow for many years before “downshifting”.  I understood her word exactly.  She was teaching English at the university in Sukhumi and helping Max and the Minister try to perform feats of foreign affairs in a country that no other country recognized.

But now the challenge I had was to find local foods at the market that would pair well with Icewines.  They couldn’t be cooked and so had to be raw or pre-cooked and assembled shortly before the tasting.  I’m used to working with a chef for such things but today all the presentation and preparation would be done by the common denominator, me.

Abkhazia uses no pesticides, herbicides or unnatural fertilizers.  The entire country is organic. The country has been cut off from the world since 1992 so Abkhazia has been spared from genetic engineering of its produce.  The water that comes down from the mountains is the purest in the world.  The local vegetables and fruits that I found in the market are the freshest and tastiest I have ever encountered.   But they weren’t what I was used to! What an adventure!

kanasta on flickr captured a moment in the Sukhumi market.

All afternoon I and my new friend trotted around the Sukhumi market. I was literally a kid in a candy story tasting cheeses, breads, fruits, and some unknown concoctions that I was so happy to find.  She introduced me to her mother’s friends who tended the market stands.  She patiently answered all my naive questions, and in the end we had a couple of bags of fabulous foods to try with Icewines.

On the Eastern shores of the Black Sea, Lavash is a wonderful white bread that rises a bit into a fabulous loaf.  Closer to Arabia, it would be a completely flat bread that does not rise, but in these parts, it rises just enough to make it a bread, not crackers, and to have the ability to hold taste and smell in the bread.   Khachipuri is a cheese bread. If we were making cheese bread in North America, we might fold feta and ricotta into bread dough and bake.  All over the Causasus Mountains the recipe for Khachipuri changes based on what is available locally.

Suluguni cheese is a wonderful smoked cheese.  I had a brief translation problem when I asked what another kind of cheese was.  My friend stopped and tried hard to describe the animal it came with.  It had long horns. The animal’s hair was long and grey.  It was a big animal.  Could it be that I was pairing Icewine with yak cheese?  It was heavy and salty and perfectly paired with Riesling.

Lana arranged in Russian with the taxi driver to stop at a bakery on the way to UNOMIG.  As I walked into the bakery, they were pulling the Lavash out of the oven and handed it to me.  I know I have never in my life ridden in such a lovely smelling taxi.

As I passed through the guardhouse at the gates the guards looked at me.  I held my bags up and said, “I’m taking booze to Teddy”.  They passed me through immediately.

Winetastings are winetastings.  The staid ones begin with a brief history of why the Niagara Peninsula creates a perfect microclimate for Icewine.  We talk about the harvest happening in the dead of night in the bitter cold and why that is important for making great Icewines. Then we begin to sample, and talk about colour, nose, taste and finish like all wines, interspersing the pours with anecdotes and tidbits about the wineries represented there.

The Dan Aykroyd Icewine was appreciated, proving that Dan is a Canadian known pretty well around the world.  There was a moment of silent reverence when the cork on the $400 bottle of Pillitteri Shiraz was eased out and carefully poured around.  I got to retell the story of Allan and Brian Schmidt taking their The Vineland Estates Icewine to the magnetic north pole.

As I poured the Reif Icewine, the Australian fellow asked, “Did you stomp these grapes with your own feet?”  Now Icewine tastings are usually formal, staid events where one tries to present the wine in a structured and studied manner.  His question, and my response, “Yes I did, but after a while I got tired and sat down on them” signaled the end of any formality and the event evolved into a casual cocktail party.

I’m pretty proud of being Canadian. We have a great country.  I was pretty proud and pleasantly surprised to meet the Canadian representative in UNOMIG at the end of the wine tasting. I didn’t know that this fellow was the Canadian as he wasn’t wearing a uniform flag patch.  Teddy had to introduce us. He was a tall, very black man with a distinct Ethiopian ethnic background. He had immigrated to Canada, and then went back out into the world as Canada’s representative. On many levels, I was proud to meet him.  What does a Canadian look like?

Yesterday, July 15, 2009 the UNOMIG mission left Abkahzia.  Russia had vetoed an extension and has moved troops into Akbhazia at the invitation of the Akbhazian leaders.  This includes an air base, upgrades to road, sea and rail infrastructure and a permanent presence of Russian troops to face the presence of Georgian troops on the southern border, supported by American troops.  The USS New York was recently in Poti, Georgia. The New York is one of America’s newest warships.  It is packed to the gunnels with electronics and her mission is electronic information gathering.  The cold war is not over.

The good news is that Abkhazia needs the infrastructure, the jobs, and the hard currency that will be spent, and perhaps a different bunch of guys with guns on the border will bring a stronger version of peace.  The bad news is that there are still guns pointed at guns, and this area will be a political football between east and west for some time to come.

Contact VinoCanada for Export of Icewines and Canadian Wine Exports at www.vinocanada.com

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