In vino, veritas - the ancient Latin saying has it. To put it simple, wine is also one of the most preferred goods on the market today. The end of the AGRA International Agricultural Exhibition and several preceding trade expositions in Paris and Berlin make us talk on Bulgarian wines abroad. This country exported 58 million liters of wine in 2014, CEO of the Executive Agency for Viticulture and Wine Krasimir Koev said and added:

“Unfortunately in 2014 we registered a slight drop of export on 2013 – some 2 million liters down. The overall export for 2013 was 60 million liters and for 2014 it was 58 million. This drop is insignificant, taking into consideration the background of events. We all expected a much more serious situation.”

The military conflict in Ukraine and its economic consequences resulted in the significant depreciation of the ruble that affected Bulgarian producers. The two fighting countries are among our major trade partners, Krasimir Koev commented and resumed:

“We had no export to Ukraine in 2014. The military zone is the main trade route for the transportation of Bulgarian goods to Russia. There were 11 cases with Bulgarian trucks of wine producers disappearing. Our companies started to use bypass routes via the Baltic states, which added additional cost to their production.”

It is interesting to say that Bulgarian wines are not in the list of European goods, banned from entering Russia, like fruits and vegetables or dairy products. The drop of the quantities requested is due to the increased prices of European goods. Koev explains the situation like that:

“The ruble has depreciated a lot, compared to the euro. Thus Russian traders had one more reason to abstain from purchasing not only Bulgarian wines, but also wine from other European countries. If there were no shocks on these markets we would have once again registered an export growth of 15 – 20 percent, which has been the trend over the past five years. We increase the quantities of wine exported by 5 – 10 million liters year on year.”

2014 was not bad at all for Bulgarian wines, despite the slight export drop. It revealed opportunities for their presentation on the Asian market, where we delivered some 22 – 24 million liters last year, 5 million exported to China only. According to Krasimir Koev, the projects, applying for funding this year via the National Program for Stimulation of the Viticulture and Wine-making Sector are targeting Asian countries, but also our traditional markets – Russia, the USA, the EU, where we have been gradually gaining back our market positions, lost in the 1990s.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev