(IndRus) - If Russia is not known as one of the world’s best wine producers, it was traditionally for good reason. The country’s wine has endured a torrid reputation since Soviet times, when products were typically oversweet and unsophisticated. Moreover, demand for wine in Russia has never been especially high, and these attitudes are borne out by statistics.

According to data provided by state statistics service Rosstat, wine only comprises 8.5 percent of the total volume of alcohol sales in the country.

As long as the domestic market is unsaturated, Russian wine will remain difficult to find abroad. At present only a few relatively large operations export their products, and then only in small batches meant primarily for marketing. For instance, the Abrau Durso factory delivers around 150,000 bottles of sparkling wine, which comprises less than 1 percent of its sales in Russia.

The wines of Abrau Durso can be purchased in Great Britain, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Israel, the Baltic States, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other republics of the former USSR. Tsimlyansk Wines only exports about 120,000 bottles to Russia’s near abroad – Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine. Fanagoria, meanwhile, exports a small quantity of its production to Japan and the USA.

Pavel Titov, chairman of the board of directors of the Abrau Durso Company, is bullish about the prospects of Russian wines in the coming years. “We would very much like wine from Russia to become an internationally recognized brand. The quality potential of Russian wines is such that it will eventually be possible for them to compete with wines from the old and new world,” says Titov.