"The Crimean Massandra winery has received many interesting proposals. Today there was a truly significant event. We can announce that our partnership began with adding to our collection 500 bottles of wine, made from grapes of Italian vines, so we can say that this joint project has been already launched," general manager of Massandra Yanina Pavlenko told reporters.
According to the Massandra head, the partners are expected to showcase approved design and bottles' labels for their joint wine collection at the III Yalta Economic Forum.
Roberto Penazzi, who is a prominent Italian wine technology expert with a background in industry crisis management, told Sputnik that the Italian businessmen had come to Crimea with specific aims of establishing business contacts and looking into opportunities for collaboration.
"Our purpose is to establish business contacts with Crimean business leaders, particular in the fields of agriculture, food production, wine-making, and manufacturing," he said, adding that the Italian enterprises also want to find out more about the problems they may encounter and how those problems could be avoided.
On October 14-16, the 18-member delegation of Italian lawmakers and businesspeople are visiting Russia's peninsula of Crimea.
The Crimean peninsula seceded from Ukraine and reunified with Russia after more than 96 percent of local voters supported the move in a referendum in March 2014. Kiev, as well as the European Union, the United States and their allies, did not recognize the move and consider the peninsula to be an occupied territory.
Nevertheless, over 60 delegations from dozens of countries have visited Russia’s southwestern Crimea region this year, defying Western restrictions, including those from France, Italy and Jordan.
