Ukraine’s wine industry endures hardships and adapts amid ongoing war
Decanter publishes a major retrospective piece on the state of Ukraine’s wine industry nearly four years into the war. Beykush Winery is featured as a central example of resilience: Russian forces are just 8 km away across the water, regularly shelling Ukrainian towns and villages, yet the winery never stopped production. Svitlana Tsybak recounts how in 2022, amid chaos and closed borders, wine samples for the DWWA competition were smuggled through Hungary — carried in two suitcases to London — where the Reserve Chardonnay 2019 won a gold medal. The article also describes the growth of small wineries (around 20 new ones annually), a pivot toward export markets, and the theft of thousands of bottles of Ukrainian wine in the UK from a lorry headed to London City Bond.
