Local wine isn’t ‘sweet, cheap & heady’ anymore, but foreign is still more popular

When Ukrainian tech entrepreneur Eugene Shneyderis made his first bottle of wine, he didn’t think he would one day be a wine producer. In 10 years, Shneyderis’s Beykush winery has become a reputable brand that produces nearly 30,000 bottles of wine annually.

Paving its way from rural vineyards near southern city Mykolaiv to wine stores and restaurants in bigger cities wasn’t easy for a small firm like Beykush. For reference, Mykolaiv is located 480 kilometers south of the capital, Kyiv.