The wines of Shabo

Shabo is the best-known and one of the largest wineries in Ukraine. The family business of the Georgian Iukuridze family is located in the village of Shabo, some 70 kilometres south-west of Odesa. With 1,200 hectares of its own vineyards and an output of around 15 million bottles a year, it is a major player. At the same time, the winery also makes small batches of top wines. Shabo combines European, Swiss and Georgian winemaking traditions.

Check out our 8 wines made by Shabo

Winegrowing in Shabo goes back a long way. More than 2,500 years ago, Greek colonists founded the settlement of Tyras, later Akkerman, at the mouth of the Dniester and planted vineyards there. From the sixteenth century the area belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The village was then called Asha-Abag, Turkish for "lower vineyards". The Ottomans probably also planted Telti-Kuruk during this period; the name is Turkish for "fox tail".

Long after the Ottomans had gone, winegrowers from the Swiss canton of Vaud came to the area in 1822 at the invitation of Tsar Alexander I. Their pronunciation turned the name Asha-Abag into Shabag and later Shabo. The Swiss brought European winegrowing methods with them. As early as 1847, a wine from Shabo won a first gold medal at an international competition. But the invasion by the Red Army in 1940 ended the colony's heyday: most of the Swiss fled, and those who stayed were dispossessed.

Shabo became one of the largest wine businesses in the Soviet Union and a centre for viticultural research. During Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign in the 1980s, the villagers managed to preserve most of their vineyards and facilities. In the years after the Soviet Union, however, winegrowing in the region fell into decline.

In 2003, Georgian winemaker Vaja Iukuridze took over the run-down business. Together with his family, he built a new winery and planted new vineyards. Between 2009 and 2021, Vaja and his son Giorgi, now co-owner and managing director, invested almost 115 million dollars in the company. In 2009, Ukraine's first wine culture centre opened in Shabo, including a restored house for sparkling wines and a hall of Georgian qvevris.

Shabo's vineyards lie between the Black Sea and the Dniester. The climate is mild, with a fresh sea breeze. The vineyard soils consist of sand with limestone. More than twenty grape varieties are planted, most of them European. The white grapes include Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Traminer and Muscat Ottonel. Shabo's red international varieties are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Pinot Noir. Shabo also grows the Georgian varieties Rkatsiteli and Saperavi.

The winery's calling card is Telti-Kuruk. With over 40 hectares, Shabo has the largest plantings of the variety. The oldest vines are around fifty years old. According to the winery, Shabo is the only place in the world where Telti-Kuruk still grows on its own roots, dating from before phylloxera. We currently have eight wines from Shabo in our range. You can view all our wines from Shabo here.

If you want to know more about this winery, here you will find the link to the website of Shabo.