When Sergiy Klimov speaks about wine, his excitement is infectious, even to those with a less than sophisticated palate.
Since 2014, Klimov has championed Ukrainian-made wine in numerous ways.
He runs a chain of wine bars in the capital city, Kyiv, stocking only Ukrainian-produced wine. He is an ambassador for Ukrainian wine, promoting it overseas. And now he has his own vineyard in the village of Zarichanka in western Ukraine, where he experiments with grape cultivation and the winemaking process.
Through sharing Ukrainian-made wine, Klimov feels he is preserving and building on a tradition connected to his ancestral land for thousands of years.
“It became my mission,” he said. “I want to bring revolution to the industry.”
Alongside its neighbors Moldova and Romania, and the wider region’s Georgia and Azerbaijan, Ukraine has been fertile winemaking ground for millennia. Archaeological digs have unearthed ancient Greek winemaking vessels, while fossilized remains of grape species found during other excavations date back to the 11th to 9th centuries BC.
Perhaps most famously, Crimea was home to vineyards which sat at the foot of the southern peninsula’s mountains.
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