Uzbekistan pulls out the stops for fine winemaking
PARKENT, Uzbekistan: As the warm, busy autumn becomes a distant memory and winter extends its grip over the Central Asian steppe, Uzbek grape farmer Abdumutal Yuldashev’s harvest is bottled up, bound for Russia.
If once Yuldashev’s 15 hectares ( 37 acres) of land mostly yielded grapes for the table, now he and his small cohort of workers find themselves on the front lines of an ambitious state-led winemaking drive in the majority- Muslim country.
This season his team harvested Bayan Shirei and Rkatsiteli grape varieties, native to the former Soviet countries of the Caucasus.
But in the future, more internationally-renowned types such as Chardonnay and Cabernet could be the order of the day, if strongman President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s plan to overhaul the sector bears fruit.
A decree published by the presidential office in February called for a 60-per cent increase in the state wine company’s wine exports by the end of 2021 from current levels. By then too, it also wants the area under cultivation by the company to have doubled.
Mirziyoyev has pledged to unshackle Uzbekistan’s economy, weaning it off its dependence on commodities like the water- thirsty cotton crop that covers the country in swathes, while attracting foreign investors.
The plan calls for the “organisation of cultivation of especially valuable industrial varieties of grape seedlings”, including those from France, Italy, Chile and the US.
However, industry experts have voiced reservations about Uzbekistan’s ability to become a maker of fine wines, while a wine festival organised in the capital, Tashkent, last month as part of the drive failed to pique public interest.
That has not stopped 38-year- old private farmer Yuldashev from already thinking big.
“I want to expand next season by renting some of these other fields,” he said, gesturing across a vista of vineyards stretching towards the foothills of the Parkent mountains, 80 kilometres from Tashkent.
“It seems there is a lot of work ahead,” he told AFP.
For now, local winemaking is still a far cry from the chateaux of Burgundy, and some exports are still limited to the early, unfinished stages in the winemaking process.
Uzbekistan produces around 20 million litres of wine a year, compared to France’s more than four billion litres.
At a plant near Yuldashev’s farm, a mostly female workforce dressed in white overalls watches over a conveyor belt turning out bottles of pressed grape juice, all of which will be sent to Russia for refinement.
Gayrat Ashurov, the plant’s director, says 180 local farmers, including Yuldashev, bring their grapes to the factory.
But tax breaks and other incentives for wine producers set out in the presidential decree are designed to phase out exports of raw wine and strengthen grapeto-glass operations. — AFP