Part 1 left off with Max, Teddy, the Macedonian and I having dinner in a seaside cafe in Sukhumi.
During the dinner, Teddy invited me to visit the UNOMIG compound. I grew up as an army brat and lived on army bases all my life but I knew that this, I knew was going to be a visit of a different kind.
As I passed through the guardhouse at the gates the guards searched my laptop computer bag carefully, and an escort took me to Teddy’s office about 4pm.
Somehow we ended up at the base bar. The UNOMIG team is multinational. For example, their operating rules state that a four man observation team will take two trucks and that each of the four must be from different countries. I recognized the some of the country flags on their shoulders but Teddy made the introductions and ensured that I sat with beer in front of me and got to know his mates. Of course as a Canadian Icewine salesman, I was the oddity and I sensed that oddities are better than television for these guys.
The American chided the Zimbabwean beside me for the fact that the Zimbabwe election results were mired in problems with counting ballots. I leaned over and asked the American where he was from. “Florida”, he said. What irony! With rampant inflation the price of a bottle of Icewine in Zimbabwe currency was 1,174,000 dollars in July, 2008. The Zimbabwean took the brunt of the good natured jabs that day until the Australian, a larger than life caricature of an Australian, arrived to dish it out happily to everybody.
They were intensely curious about Icewine. I passed around one 200ml bottle of Pillitteri Shiraz Icewine that would retail in Moscow for about $400. They cradled it in reverence and when it had made it around the bar I asked if they would like to try some Icewine. The thought of a $400 quarter bottle of wine had them intrigued and the talk evolved into arranging an Icewine tasting for the UNOMIG guys the following night. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but I recall that Teddy kept a full beer in front of me the rest of the night.
Icewine, like all wines, is better paired with complementary food, good company and circumstance. I had the wines that I had carried over three borders in my suitcase left over from Moscow wine tastings. The company would be superb. However, this wine tasting at the end of the world, in a place that sounded like a Harry Potter destination needed some food pairing.
The next day, Lana offered to show me around the Sukhumi market to pick up fruits and cheeses.
Lana is the head of the International Department in Akbhazia’s foreign affairs department. Like many well educated Abkhazians, she took a degree in a Moscow university and worked in Moscow for many years before “downshifting”. I understood her word exactly. She was teaching English at the university in Sukhumi and helping Max and the Minister try to perform feats of foreign affairs in a country that no other country recognized.
But now the challenge I had was to find local foods at the market that would pair well with Icewines. They couldn’t be cooked and so had to be raw or pre-cooked and assembled shortly before the tasting. I’m used to working with a chef for such things but today all the presentation and preparation would be done by the common denominator, me.
Abkhazia uses no pesticides, herbicides or unnatural fertilizers. The entire country is organic. The country has been cut off from the world since 1992 so Abkhazia has been spared from genetic engineering of its produce. The water that comes down from the mountains is the purest in the world. The local vegetables and fruits that I found in the market are the freshest and tastiest I have ever encountered. But they weren’t what I was used to! What an adventure!
All afternoon I and my new friend trotted around the Sukhumi market. I was literally a kid in a candy story tasting cheeses, breads, fruits, and some unknown concoctions that I was so happy to find. She introduced me to her mother’s friends who tended the market stands. She patiently answered all my naive questions, and in the end we had a couple of bags of fabulous foods to try with Icewines.
On the Eastern shores of the Black Sea, Lavash is a wonderful white bread that rises a bit into a fabulous loaf. Closer to Arabia, it would be a completely flat bread that does not rise, but in these parts, it rises just enough to make it a bread, not crackers, and to have the ability to hold taste and smell in the bread. Khachipuri is a cheese bread. If we were making cheese bread in North America, we might fold feta and ricotta into bread dough and bake. All over the Causasus Mountains the recipe for Khachipuri changes based on what is available locally.
Suluguni cheese is a wonderful smoked cheese. I had a brief translation problem when I asked what another kind of cheese was. My friend stopped and tried hard to describe the animal it came with. It had long horns. The animal’s hair was long and grey. It was a big animal. Could it be that I was pairing Icewine with yak cheese? It was heavy and salty and perfectly paired with Riesling.
Lana arranged in Russian with the taxi driver to stop at a bakery on the way to UNOMIG. As I walked into the bakery, they were pulling the Lavash out of the oven and handed it to me. I know I have never in my life ridden in such a lovely smelling taxi.
As I passed through the guardhouse at the gates the guards looked at me. I held my bags up and said, “I’m taking booze to Teddy”. They passed me through immediately.
Winetastings are winetastings. The staid ones begin with a brief history of why the Niagara Peninsula creates a perfect microclimate for Icewine. We talk about the harvest happening in the dead of night in the bitter cold and why that is important for making great Icewines. Then we begin to sample, and talk about colour, nose, taste and finish like all wines, interspersing the pours with anecdotes and tidbits about the wineries represented there.
The Dan Aykroyd Icewine was appreciated, proving that Dan is a Canadian known pretty well around the world. There was a moment of silent reverence when the cork on the $400 bottle of Pillitteri Shiraz was eased out and carefully poured around. I got to retell the story of Allan and Brian Schmidt taking their The Vineland Estates Icewine to the magnetic north pole.
As I poured the Reif Icewine, the Australian fellow asked, “Did you stomp these grapes with your own feet?” Now Icewine tastings are usually formal, staid events where one tries to present the wine in a structured and studied manner. His question, and my response, “Yes I did, but after a while I got tired and sat down on them” signaled the end of any formality and the event evolved into a casual cocktail party.
I’m pretty proud of being Canadian. We have a great country. I was pretty proud and pleasantly surprised to meet the Canadian representative in UNOMIG at the end of the wine tasting. I didn’t know that this fellow was the Canadian as he wasn’t wearing a uniform flag patch. Teddy had to introduce us. He was a tall, very black man with a distinct Ethiopian ethnic background. He had immigrated to Canada, and then went back out into the world as Canada’s representative. On many levels, I was proud to meet him. What does a Canadian look like?
Yesterday, July 15, 2009 the UNOMIG mission left Abkahzia. Russia had vetoed an extension and has moved troops into Akbhazia at the invitation of the Akbhazian leaders. This includes an air base, upgrades to road, sea and rail infrastructure and a permanent presence of Russian troops to face the presence of Georgian troops on the southern border, supported by American troops. The USS New York was recently in Poti, Georgia. The New York is one of America’s newest warships. It is packed to the gunnels with electronics and her mission is electronic information gathering. The cold war is not over.
The good news is that Abkhazia needs the infrastructure, the jobs, and the hard currency that will be spent, and perhaps a different bunch of guys with guns on the border will bring a stronger version of peace. The bad news is that there are still guns pointed at guns, and this area will be a political football between east and west for some time to come.
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