Vinoman

Vinoman is Ukraine's northernmost licensed winery - Borys Slaboshevskyi's project in Zhavynka village on a bay of the Desna River, Chernihiv Oblast. Slaboshevskyi came to wine from black-caviar and fish farming (his fish project started in 2002) and credits a 1988 Lafite gift bottle as the prompt. First home-cellar attempts 2011, vineyard planted 2012-2015, official wine production licence 2020 - the cellar work was well underway by then.

Around 1 ha owned plus a few hectares leased on a sandy slope, cool northern climate that the rest of Ukrainian viticulture skips. Ripening is fragile - one September cold snap took half the crop in a single year. Hybrids have been replaced with vinifera; the focus has settled on whites and Pinot Noir as the cool-suited reds. Plantings include Pinot Noir, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Bianca and Traminer, with trial rows of Cabernet Sauvignon, Rkatsiteli, Riesling, Irsai Oliver and Zweigelt.

Self-described craft urban winery. Italian and Slovenian equipment; ageing in Ukrainian rock-oak (skelyastyi dub) barrels alongside French oak. Production around 9-10K bottles a year with a stated target of 60-80K. Organic-aspirational by interview, not certified. Reserve bottlings sometimes pull fruit from southern Bessarabia / Odesa Oblast parcels; estate fruit goes into a separate Pinot Noir Chernihiv terroir line.

Spring 2022 brought active combat through Chernihiv Oblast. The team kept up vine training under shelling; the fish farm next door took heavier damage.