“I was listening to Italian wine growers at a conference—their situation reminded me of ours, except they were talking about the 1960s.”
The Molchanovs are also part of a new cooperative that hopes to attract tourists to a winery on the road to the ancient Greek settlement of Olbia, once the war ends.
Meanwhile, they run a hub for local winemakers who have lost their own vineyards.
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One visitor was Olha Kashchenko, who lives in the dangerous city of Kherson with her young son.
She once worked as a wine tour guide and dreamed of making wine.
She bought land and built a house, but her plot is now in the red zone, the house destroyed, and she has been unable to reach it since 2023.
“We plan to return, we will rebuild and plant our own grapes. But the area is mined,” she said.
According to Svitlana Tsybak, president of the Ukrainian Association of Craft Winemakers, the country's vineyard area has shrunk from 68,000 hectares in 2014 to just 15,000 hectares now, due to the annexation of Crimea, occupation, and the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
Many large growers have switched to sunflowers or wheat.
Yet, remarkably, 82 craft wineries have been established since 2022, mostly in safer central and western regions.
Tsybak is also CEO of Beykush winery, located on a narrow cape southwest of Mykolaiv, close to the strategic town of Ochakiv and within sight of Russian-occupied territory.
