One attraction of visiting Russia is the rather good Georgian wine. So it was disappointing to read that imports from Georgia are suddenly banned.

Officially, says Russia, the wines contain too many pesticides and heavy metals. But the real story is that Georgia belongs to the so-called ‘Awkward Squad’ - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. These are rebel regions with unacceptably Western leanings. Which means that Russia’s other great wine producer, Moldova, is being embargoed too. For winos, things are as bad as during prohibition.

Georgian Wine : last banned in 1985 during Gorbachev’s ‘Struggle Against Alcoholism‘

If Moldovan wine doesn’t meet regulations either, it’s actually all Russia’s fault. I found this in an agricultural journal:

For 50 years, 74% of Moldovian land was overworked to provide cheap food for the Soviet Union. During those years, the average usage of pesticide culminated in over 17 kg per hectare. 25% of the food produced was polluted with nitrates. The maximum content of DDT is still at a 9.2 mg/kg, which means 92 times the Maximum Permissible Concentrations (MPC).

I know wine likes poor soil, but that seems a bit extreme. It’s also a miracle how Moldova turns its water into wine. To quote again:

‘21 million m3 of untreated water, including 610 metric tonnes of petroleum products and 19,000 metric tonnes of organic compounds are led into the Dnestr basin. Every year, 8 million m3 of water run through livestock farms and return to the water system contaminated with nitrates, parasite eggs and pathogens.’

It is hard to reconcile this with the descriptions of Moldovan wines on my restaurant menu. Try this one: ‘ Tamâioasa Româneasca has an imposing originality offered by the yellow-golden colour with a complex flavour resembling field flowers and honey.’

All that aside, what are we going to drink if there’s no Georgian or Moldovan wine? Insiders tell me that there will stilly be plenty of Georgian wine - it will just be in bottles marked Argentina, Bulgaria and Chile. For certainty, though, a switch to Krasnodar wines might be the best option. These may not have the full-bodied parasites and pathogens of Moldova, but ‘the terroir of the Taman Peninsula enjoys fresh breezes blowing at once from 2 seas, with the number of sunny days higher than in Yalta or Sochi.’ Failing that, tourists will just have to do as local Russian men do and drink hydraulic brake fluid and after-shave.

Georgian wine is best served straight from a Jerrycan