The Association of Gardeners, Grape Growers and Winemakers of Ukraine (Ukrsadvinprom) and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food have begun to work on the creation of a viticultural register to record the production and consumption of grapes and wine in Ukraine, which will allow to cancel the licensing of wine and remove it from the list of excisable goods.

This Head of Ukrsadvinprom Volodymyr Pechko announced that his association and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy began to work on the creation of a viticultural register, which is necessary for the correct regulation of the market, namely, on the creation of three types of obligatory declarations: 1) how many grapes you produced, 2) how much wine you made from these grapes, 3) how much wine you have left at the end of the year.

According to him, with the help of these three declarations the State will be able to effectively analyse the production, sales volumes and carryover stocks of grapes and wine in the country, which in the future will allow it to abandon the need to license wine and abolish the excise tax from it.

Pechko added that, according to Ukrainian law, wine is a food product that should not be subject to excise tax.
“I believe that this will lead to an increase in the number of wineries. We are working to ensure that such ‘chateau’ [wineries] are created in Ukraine. These do not have to be giant enterprises,” he said.

In addition, Ukrsadvinprom intends in 2022 to join the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine), which controls 85% of the world wine market.

We are planning to enter the international organization OIV. This is an organization for wine, which includes 47 states. It is 85% of the world wine market, which is created by the leading countries: China, France, Spain, the United States – and which everyone is striving to join. It is engaged in the harmonization of accepted standards for the production of wine products.

Volodymyr Pechko, Head of Ukrsadvinprom

According to him, this initiative is also supported by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy. The head of the organisation said that the issue of joining the OIV is only how much time is needed to complete the association procedure. He claimed that it will be possible to do this next year.