Wines linked to Putin pulled from San Francisco tasting competition

Russian wines submitted to the San Francisco International Wine Competition (SFIWC) were removed from the contest shortly before the results were announced. The Association of Winegrowers and Winemakers of Russia (АВВР, or “AVVR”) said on its Telegram channel that on Dec. 16 it received a notice from the event’s organizers stating that a decision was made to disqualify the Russian entries following an appeal by an unnamed “U.S. elected official.” The final scores for the disqualified wines will not be disclosed.

According to the AVVR, 95 Russian wines had been accepted by the competition and were already tasted by the judges before the decision was made to remove them. “This is the first time such a large number of Russian wines has taken part in a competition of this kind in the United States,” the association said.

As The Insider reported earlier today, the submissions included wines from two wineries located at President Vladimir Putin’s palace complex in Gelendzhik — Divnomorskoye Estate and Krinitsa — as well as Mezyb Estate, linked to Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Other entries came from Winepark, associated with Sberbank CEO German Gref; Derbent Vino, linked to former Russian Railways vice president Salman Babaev; and Myskhako, owned by Krasnodar regional lawmaker Alexei Sidyukov.

The wines were transported to the U.S. by AVVR's deputy executive director Pavel Mayorov, who carried the bottles in his personal luggage via Qatar, Georgia, and the UAE. Russian excise stamps on the bottles were covered with stickers reading “Not for sale” in Hebrew. The export of Russian alcoholic products to the United States has been banned by multiple executive orders since March 2022 — and the import of any goods from Crimea has been banned since Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.