Imported wines and liquors disappeared from the country's store shelves at the beginning of this month as retailers sold off their stocks or returned them to suppliers in keeping with a ban on old excise stamps. The Federal Customs Service had imposed the ban as part of a campaign to squeeze bootleg alcohol out of the market.
Wine imports from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova were banned from sale in Russia earlier this year over an alleged failure to meet Russia's hygienic standards.
Insiders said that in the best-case scenario new supplies of imported liquor would start arriving in Russia in mid-August. But in the worst-case scenario, they said, the nation will have to survive on a lean diet of domestically produced vodka and beer through the fall. And, of course, there is no escaping price hikes.
"New supplies will come in only at the end of August, so all hopes are on the old [supplies], which are yet to be re-labeled. So consumers should not expect [imported] drinks to be back soon." said Vadim Drobiz, the spokesman for the National Union of Alcohol Market Operators.
With new excise stamps not readily available, only 5% of the bottles had their old excise stamps replaced by a July 1 deadline. The rest were returned to suppliers or sent back to warehouses for re-labeling.
"Any shortage sends prices up," Drobiz said. "So, of course, the prices of alcoholic beverages will be raised, although probably by no more than 20%."
According to Alexander Barkhatov, the chief communications officer for Russian supermarket network Perekryostok, "The situation with imported alcoholic beverages is normalizing and departments selling wines and spirits won't come back to life until fall."
He said liquor importers were likely to raise their prices by an average 10%.
The current crisis on Russia's alcohol market is the most serious since a prohibition campaign in the late 1980s, when most wines and liquors were ordered off the store shelves, and the slim assortment of beverages remaining would be available for sale in restricted quantities and for a few hours a day only.
