vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #530 / Social life / Reading article...

The new registration procedures in the alcoholic beverage industry in Russia have ousted imported wines and some liquors from shop and bar shelves leaving vodka and beer for domination. What choice is left for consumers?

The Unified State Automated Information System, or EGAIS, was introduced by the federal government in January but importers and distributors of foreign wines and spirits were to start complying with it on July 1. EGAIS is designed to keep records of all alcoholic beverages sold in the country from both domestic and foreign producers.

The new system’s lame work has already emptied shelves of imported alcoholic beverages including all wines, leaving ample shelf space for locally produced vodka and beer.

Obviously, the government’s idea was to introduce stricter certification procedures which would reduce tainted alcohol production and consumption and decrease deaths from intoxication.

Gennady Onishchenko, the country's chief epidemiologist, recently revealed statistics that the number of alcohol-related deaths declined in the first five months of 2006 thanks to the new registration procedures.

Primorye’s officials also reported a 37 percent drop in tainted-alcohol deaths in the initial six months of 2006 compared to the same period last year.

However, doctors at the toxic department of Vladivostok Hospital No.2 say that last year they dealt with 250 serious cases of alcohol intoxication and only in eight of them uncertified alcohol was the cause. In five cases the intoxication was caused by spirits containing substances like window cleaner liquids. In the remaining cases people were intoxicated by certified alcohol products.

“Nothing has changed since the introduction of the law – people who are used to drinking continue to drink, mostly vodka or beer in excessive amounts,” commented to the Vladivostok News Viktor Sorokin, a doctor for the intoxication department.

Two things which are evident at the moment are that the new certification rules have limited the choice for consumers and complicated business for restaurant and bar owners.

The new law has had a major affect on business and in early July Canadian Vlad Motor Inn’s Restaurant did not sell anything. Now liquor and wine are slowly beginning to trickle in again, stated Peter Lorentsen, General Manager of Vlad Motor Inn’s hotel and restaurant.

Currently – just this week – they have six different bottles of wine to choose from, six imported liquors and three domestic liquors. Normally they have 20 to 30 different selections of each.

Staff of a Russian restaurant ‘Sem Futov’ echoed the Canadian manager saying that, “the assortment of alcohol beverages in their restaurant has dropped from 250 to 11 items.”

Lorentsen also shared that everyday his staff must spend a significant amount of time calling liquor distributors city-wide attempting to get more and a wider variety of liquor and wine for his hotel and restaurant patrons. At the same time he sees liquor sold in some places in town that he cannot get and does not know where those businesses are getting it. “It does not seem like a free and fair market,” he lamented.