This year’s Wine Festival to take place on October 21-22

This year’s edition of the Wine Festival will take place on October 21-22, Info-Prim Neo informs, quoting the web site of the Agro-industrial State Agency “Moldova-Vin” www.vinmoldova.md. The date of the festival became already a tradition and was settled through a Governmental decision, which also included the composition of a committee for co-coordinating and organizing the festival. The director general of “Moldova-Vin”, Valeriu Mironescu was appointed as head of the commission. The National Day of Wine was instituted in Moldova in 2002 and is organized under the patronage of the president Vladimir Voronin. The organizers of the event say that the festival aims at reviving and improving the wine field, promoting abroad Moldovan wines. This year, the Wine Festival will be organized in the context of the embargo imposed in March to Moldovan wines by Russia, the main market where Moldova exports its wine production, with an absorption capacity of over 90% of the export volumes. In 2005 the volume of exports to the Russian Federation amounted to USD 313 mln. According to official statistics, in the first 5 months of 2006 the so-called “Wine war” jeopardized the Moldovan economy USD 21 mln, however unofficial information claim several-fold higher loss. In the same period, Moldova tripled its volume of wine exports on the European market – from USD 5.1 mln in the 1st half of 2005 to USD 14.9 mln in the same period of 2006.