I feel rather ashamed of my recent trip to inspect vineyards in the south of Russia. First, and most unusually, I went at the invitation of some wineries there. I usually insist on paying my own way but the FT had no qualms about my being a guest in this virtually uncharted corner of the wine world, where local knowledge is particularly useful. Second, I got into an unseemly tussle with my assistant as to who should accept this invitation from Fanagoria, Myskhako and Sauk Dere wineries. Both of us are keen travellers and were intrigued by the prospect of being the first western-based wine writer to look at post-Soviet viticulture on the Black Sea coast. I am afraid to say that I pulled rank.

So I flew to the Kuban region, which lies east of Crimea on the Black Sea coast, a region that takes its name from the river running through it. What I discovered is that, give or take a statue of Lenin, Russian wine production is remarkably like wine production everywhere else, and what I saw was almost disappointingly familiar.

The big transformation in Russian wine production has been in the infrastructure, with new winery equipment and even whole new wineries being installed. In the former Soviet Union, grapes were grown from Moldova to Tajikistan and transformed into wine with maximum efficiency but minimum attention to quality. Half-made wine, stuffed full of preservatives, was transported to unglamorous bottling plants near the major cities. Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev and his anti-alcohol campaign, which left vast tracts of eastern European vineyards surplus to requirements, and vineyards, even in Russia’s favoured Black Sea coast region, suffered considerable neglect.

Much of Russia, like Ukraine, is too cold to ripen grapes successfully. And in Russia’s wine districts north and east of Kuban – Daghestan, Stavropol and Rostov-on-Don – vines routinely have to be banked up in winter to keep them alive. Even in Kuban, Russia’s balmiest wine region, a substantial proportion of vines is lost in winters as cold as 2002 and 2006. The more northerly Russian wine regions may have their indigenous varieties, but in the resurgent Kuban region the vast majority of vines being planted carry such international names as Cabernet, Chardonnay, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc.

The local government has long been wine-friendly and now there are state subsidies to instil order and trellising into old, unkempt vineyards. It is state policy apparently to restore the total area of Russian vineyard to its pre-Gorbachev 1984 level of more than 400,000 hectares. Currently the total is only 65,000 hectares despite some determined recent planting.

Fanagoria, for example, which claims to be Russia’s biggest producer of estate bottled wines, has about 2,300 hectares of vineyard, of which almost two-thirds are very new, very neat, mechanisable plantings in the fertile black soils of the Taman peninsula. The winery takes its name from the ancient Greek colony that one can so easily imagine on this spit of land between the Black and Azov seas.

Every summer the mounds over the ancient settlement are uncovered and more gems from successive incomers are unearthed. The local archaeological museum is stuffed with Ottoman, Genoan, Slavonic, Khazar, Byzantine, early Christian, Roman and ancient Greek leftovers from the spoils sent to the Hermitage in St Petersburg. The museum’s curator claims that viticulture predated the ancient Greeks in this part of the world. What is certain is that it died out soon after the Greeks left and was not revived until the 19th century, firstly in the Crimea and then in Kuban.

Abrau Durso (its name, like many here, a leftover from Turkish rule) is Russia’s oldest winery in continuous operation, catering to the Russians’ longstanding love of sparkling wine. Sweet red wine is another wine style prized by Russian consumers, who were long taught to disdain native products in favour of bottles labelled Georgia (although one problem with the Russian wine market continues to be the lack of regulation).

The Kremlin’s ban on wine imported from Moldova and Georgia in 2006 has provided a market opportunity for Russian wine. Fanagoria admits that it puts the word “export” in English on its wine labels because this adds value in Russian eyes. Even official figures acknowledge that 70 per cent of the wine labelled as Russian is made up of cheap imports. Wine made from grapes grown in Russia accounts for just 20 per cent of all the wine sold in Russia. But sales of truly Russian wine are growing and have encouraged a recent influx of investors.

I passed a beautifully maintained new 500-hectare vineyard said to have Slovakian connections on my way to Myskhako winery on the outskirts of the port of Novorossiysk. Here I met a couple of young Swiss winemakers pressing grapes grown on a local Swiss-owned vineyard. Château Le Grand Vostock is a substantial Franco-Russian project aimed at encouraging wine tourism in Kuban. A more recent enterprise, the spruce, white-walled Château Tamagne is a 2007 creation on the Taman peninsula, financed by oligarchs from the Urals.

When I met them, Pyotr and Yevgeny Romanishin, director-general and sales director of Fanagoria, were just off to visit the Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich, in what may have proved a fruitless search for ideas for running a wine festival. Yevgeni had just returned from visiting a potential customer in China. But even they admit that exports are likely to remain a minor concern. I tasted some promising Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir from the cooler vineyards of Fanagoria, and some convincing Aligoté from their much older vines. Myskhako, in warmer, drier soils to the south, can clearly do good things with Cabernet and Merlot, as can Château Le Grand Vostock, to judge from their Chêne Royale 2007.

But non-Russians might be more titillated by less familiar varietals such as the crisp white Rkatsiteli and fiery red Saperavi that the Russians have borrowed from Georgia, and curiosities such as Tsimlansky Black, from the banks of the Don, that seems to be able to make smoky, dusty reds with real character. But without wine laws, the Russian wine scene is likely to continue to be as undisciplined as my preconceptions.

See tasting notes on Russian wines on purple pages of www.jancisrobinson.com

jancis.robinson@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/robinson