Russians still stuck on sweet fizz

(TheDrinksBusiness) - Russian consumers have yet to embrace brut sparkling wine despite the efforts of one of the country’s top fizz producers to lure drinkers away from demi-doux.

Speaking at the London International Wine Fair at ExCel this week, Pavel Titov, director of historic Russian sparkling wine estate Abrau-Durso, explained:

“When I joined the company we had 34 different labels in our range. My first decision was to scale it right back and discontinue half of the wines.

“The aim was to get rid of all our demi-doux and demi-sec styles, as I believe brut is the way forward, but this didn’t make commercial sense as Russian consumers are still stuck on sweeter sparklers.

“I wanted to try and change the market trends, but the love of sweeter wines is so deeply ingrained in Russia that it’s hard to influence age-old drinking habits,” he said.

Titov did reveal however that mindsets were starting to change, and that sales of brut are currently the fastest growing within the company, while demi-doux (containing up to 45g of residual sugar) remains Abrau-Durso’s best seller.