Abrau Durso to float on Russian stock market

The owner of one of Russia's oldest sparkling wine estates is planning to float the company to finance an expansion plan and build a luxury resort around the winery.

Abrau Durso, a former supplier to the Russian Imperial Court and the Kremlin, aims to double annual production from the current 18 million bottles to 36 mililon bottles with the capital raised.

‘We feel we need to increase production capacity as supply is lagging behind demand. We are also heavily investing in a tourism project,’ he said.

The lakeside winery is based an hour’s drive from two popular Black Sea holiday resorts and mainly attracts day-trippers.

‘We need to build a larger hotel. We have 42 rooms and we’d like another 120 rooms. We would also like to do a spa hotel and resort around the winery,’ he added.

The Titov family, originally in the petrochemical business, has been involved in Abrau Durso since 2004. It currently produces around 2m bottles of methode traditionelle wine, with the remainder produced by the Charmat method.

Written by Rebecca Gibb

Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).