By Miroslav Bondar
Sweden is a country with the cleanest ecology, which ranks second in the world in terms of living standards. This is both the cause and the consequence of the impeccable quality of the nationally known products all over the world. Also, the Swedes make high demands on their international partners.
Just the other day it became known that Ian Bernadt, the second cousin of the real King of Sweden Carl XVI and a well-known wine expert visited the Crimea in order to conclude a serious contract with FSUE “Massandra” to produce its own line of wines. According to Yan Berndatt himself, a visit to the Crimea is, first of all, a tribute to the memory of his ancestors. The Grand Duke Pavel Aleksandrovich, the great-grandfather of the sommelier himself, rested on this land. Bernadt concluded a contract with the Massandra winery contract for 140 million rubles and is going to invest 70 million rubles in the modernization of the wine industry. A new line of Swedish-Russian wines will be called “Romanov-Massandra”.
The history of grape and wine “Massandra” begins in 1826. At international competitions, her wines have been repeatedly awarded with Super Grand Prix cups, Grand Prix cups and awarded more than 200 medals. Enoteca “Massandra” is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest in the world. From the very beginning of production, this enterprise is the official supplier of the Russian royal court. It was the fault of this brand that was submitted to the table when the Russian Tsar Nicholas II hosted foreign delegations. Ordinary people could always buy wine in the pharmacy, as a product of the highest quality, with medicinal properties.
The label of each bottle was decorated with the State Emblem of Russia. The most outstanding collection wines, which are produced to this day, can be considered Port red “Livadia” from Cabernet and Port wine red “Massandra” from the variety Murvedr. They are also called “royal”, for the first time they were cooked in Livadia – in the cellars of the estate of the Imperial Family. As the contemporaries of Tsar Nicholas II maintained, these were his favorite wines.
It is not surprising that the Swedes, with their pragmatism in the choice of international partners, settled precisely on the Crimean Massandra. Berdadt already flew from Moscow to Simferopol, after which he personally got acquainted with the wine production and selected the wines he liked for his own line, the work on which will begin in the near future.
Let’s hope that this winter the residents of northern Sweden will warm themselves and offer their hot mulled wine from their own wines, from the radiant Crimean coast.