Azerbaijan and Egypt have been making wine for thousands of years but they’ve only just started winning awards, Adam Lechmere reports
Two countries with many thousands of years’ winemaking behind them have scooped medals at the International Wine and Spirit Competition – the Azerbaijani winery Aspi taking Silver for the first time.
Aspi consolidated the medals it won a couple of years ago at the IWSC, with a 2017 Bronze and (for the first time) Silver for its Savalan Syrah Reserve 2013 and Savalan Marselan-Syrah Reserve 2013.
Egypt’s Al Ahram company reprised its two Bronze medals from 2015, for the Ayam white and the Grand Marquis 2016
The fact that an Egyptian and an Azerbaijani winery should win medals in a major UK wine competition isn’t surprising – they both have winemaking history reaching back thousands of years BC.
While Azerbaijan’s northern neighbour Georgia is accepted as the cradle of winemaking (grape-crushing equipment and facilities from the time of Christ have been found there), Azerbaijan itself is rich in winemaking heritage. Stone fermentation vessels dating back 4000 years have been unearthed, and references to Azerbaijani grape cultivation and the abundance of the grape harvest crop up in literature from the Greeks onwards.
It’s not surprising. Azerbaijan lies on the 40th parallel – the same latitude as Spain’s great wine region, Rioja – and its hilly and continental climate is ideal for grape growing. Under soviet rule winemaking took a downward turn, as it did across the communist eastern bloc, with emphasis placed on quantity instead of quantity. By the 1980s Azerbaijan was producing a massive two million tonnes a year – almost all of it going into Russia.
Now there are some ten wineries working in Azerbaijan, and Aspi winery is one of the country’s major producers. Its 340ha of vineyards sit in the high Savalan valley, where the climate – long hot days and cold nights – is ideal for wine grapes. Aspi and its fellow producers have an uphill task, but – as wine consultant Douglas Blyde told World Travel Guide – “grants, increasingly outward-looking winemakers, and potentially exciting new markets such as China and Korea, are engendering a new spirit of optimism”
If Azerbaijan has a long history of winemaking, it is equalled by that of Egypt. In 2005 a team from Barcelona university proved that the boy-king Tutankhamun took red wine with him on his journey to the afterlife, 3,300 years ago. Amphorae in his tomb contained acid and tartrate traces that can only have come from wine.
Modern-day Egypt is far too hot and dry for serious wine cultivation, except in the fertile Nile Delta, where Egypt’s biggest winery, the Heineken-owned Gianaclis, is to be found. The few wineries in this part of the world cultivate the grape varieties which can withstand hot and dry climates: Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache, Bobal, Tempranillo for reds, Viognier, Chardonnay and Muscat for whites.
Lesser-known wine regions like Belarus, Kazakhstan, Laos, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, and the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts & Nevis all won medals – in most cases for the first time – at the IWSC’s Northern Hemisphere tasting, the results of which are announced today.
Other countries to do well are Russia, Japan, Moldova and Georgia, all of which significantly increased their medal haul, Russia by 150 per cent, and the rest by 47-55 per cent.
“It’s fascinating for us as an international benchmark of quality to mark the changing face of wine production,” IWSC chief operating officer Richard Stoppard said. “The IWSC is the most rigorous bind tasted wine and spirit competition in the world, and our expert panel of judges award only those of the highest quality – no matter where in the world they are from.”
World Travel Guide, one of Europe’s biggest travel and good living websites, is the IWSC’s media partner.
