The Russian market has been open for Georgian alcoholic beverages since 2013, which has led to a significant increase in wine and alcohol beverage production in Georgia. The sector took a record high revenue in 2021, when wine and brandy exports totaled USD 395 million. The revenue was distributed to thousands of vine growers and hundreds of companies.
Russia ranks first by wine exports, where wine of 80,500 tons valued at USD 130.7 million was shipped from Georgia last year. This is 55% of the value of wine exports.
The United Nations trade portal - Comtrade.un enables to analyze the dependence of other wine producers on the Russian market. As of 2020, Georgia ranks first from the global wine market by its dependence on Russia.
According to Comtrade, in 2020 the Russian Federation bought wine worth USD 1 billion.
The same system shows, that Georgian wine imports to the Russian market are larger than can be seen from direct statistics. In particular, according to both Comtrade and Geostat, USD 119.5 million worth of wine was exported from Georgia to Russia in 2020, although data submitted by Russia to Comtrade show that in 2020 Russia bought USD 167.8 million worth of wine. This means that in 2020, part of Georgian wine was exported to the Russian Federation through re-exports.
The sharp difference between exports and imports is not observed only in the case of Georgia. For example, according to Comtrade, France exported only USD 26.5 million worth of wine to Russia in 2020, although according to statistics for the same year, Russia bought USD 187 million worth of French wine. Such a difference was due to re-exports.
Similarly, USD 144 million worth of wine was exported directly from Italy to Russia, while in 2020, Italian wine imports to Russia amounted to USD 338 million. According to Comtrade statistics, Lithuania and Latvia are mainly engaged in wine re-exports to Russia. Lithuania exported wine worth of 190 million worth to Russia in 2020, while wine of USD 85 million from Latvia. In the case of both countries, there is talk of re-exports of French, Italian and Spanish wines, as the wines of these countries are in the leading places in their imports.
