Russians Suffer Wine Drought

Russian wine lovers are facing a parched summer after a bureaucratic foul-up has left shelves empty in off-licences across the country. All imported wines and spirits with old excise labels must be removed from sale by July 1, but there has been a delay in the introduction of the new excise stamps.

Vodka and other traditional winter warmers are fast becoming the only tipples available, as the population wilts in a heatwave. At the Aromatniy Mir off-licence near Belorusskaya station in central Moscow yesterday a single bottle of French cognac and three bottles of Californian red wine were all that remained on rows of racks normally crammed with foreign alcohol.

"We've no idea when the next supplies will be in," said Lena, a shop assistant.

About 75% of Russian alcohol consumption is hard spirits, with wine a popular alternative, especially in the summer. Beer is treated as an elevated kind of juice.

Russian wine is largely abominable and decent supplies from Moldova and Georgia were cut off in March by a politically shaded ban. Importers and distributors still struggling to overcome that setback have complained the new crisis will slash hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The glitch came about when too few excise labels were provided too slowly to importers, and new barcode readers were not installed in time.