You're reading: Sommeliers offer tips on ordering good wine in Kyiv

Kyiv restaurants tend to offer extensive wine menus that can confuse a novice diner. So the Kyiv Post gathered advice from experts to help guide them through the wine ordering process at venues.

Their main recommendation is to order wine where professional sommeliers – the chief wine stewards of a restaurant – are employed. They can recommend a wine pairing for any dish.

“The wine list depends on the specialization of a restaurant,” says Oleg Kravcheko, a sommelier at Sobaka Siela Golubia restaurant, who was picked Ukraine’s best sommelier in 2011. “Ideally, it must harmonize with the cuisine.”

For instance, the best choice for Japanese cuisine is white and sparkling wines. A good seafood restaurant should offer a variety of dry, sparkling, or rose wines, while red ones may not be represented, but they are much needed where red meat and chicken are served, as well as sparkling and rose-chilled wines.

A restaurant with Asian cuisine should have in its cellar wines that go well with spicy food – like Pinot Gris and other French Alsace wines like Gewurztraminer, as well as the German wine Riesling.

When leaving the choice of wine up to the sommelier, customers are expected to name a country of preference, a wine’s age, and a price range, Kravchenko advised.

Dmytro Sydorenko, president of the Association of Sommeliers of Ukraine, devoted 20 years of his life to the wine business. He refuses to recommend even a classical combination of red wine with cheese, saying that without knowing the type of cheese it would be pointless.

“When some say that a certain wine tastes good with fish, does it mean that it is good with stock fish too? Because it is also fish,” Sydorenko said.

Sydorenko also said that an average customer may not distinguish between the refined taste of expensive wine and ordinary wine from a supermarket.


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Dmytro Sydorenko’s picks of restaurants with best wines

Pantagruel specializes in Italian cuisine and offers Italian wines. The restaurant owner has been working to perfect the Italian wine list for some 10 years now.

“They have wines that are served only in this restaurant. Guests can sample them and the price is affordable,” Sydorenko says.

Every month, Pantagruel has wine tastings that offer wine from little-known wineries from a different region, and sells it by the glass.

Price: Bottles start at Hr 330 and go up to Hr 10,000.

Where and when: 1 Mykoly Lysenka St. 8 a.m. – 11 p.m.

The sprawling Praha restaurant is located far from the city center, but its wine list is worth the trip. It pours wines from France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, the U.S., New Zealand, and Ukraine.

The restaurant’s special perk is a terrace near a lake with swans. The most sought after wine is Italian sparkling wine Prosecco, which is good as an aperitif or with light salads. A sommelier is available.

Price: From Hr 440 for a bottle of Ukrainian Chardonnay Colonist 2012 to Hr 22,500 for French rose champagne Louis Roederer 2015.

Where and when: 1Akademika Glushkova Ave. 9 a.m. – 11:30 p.m. A sommelier is available from noon.

Vino e Cucina specializes in fine wine and Italian cuisine. The venue pours wines with a special device that doesn’t harm the cork, preserving the opened bottle for the next visitor.

The wine list includes more than 800 titles and has a very impressive price range.

Price: Bottles start at Hr 200. The most expensive wine is Chateau Petrus 2014 from Pomerol, France, sold for Hr 104,000.

Where and when: 82 Artema St., 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Mr. Zuma restaurant specializes in modern Japanese cuisine, but also offers red meat with a variety of original sauces. Its sommelier advises to choose red Pinot Noir from Burgundy, France, to go with grilled salmon or a red meat steak.

The restaurant offers wines from old Europe and from Chili, New Zealand, Argentina as well.

Price: Hr 500 – 10,000 for a bottle

Where to drink: 1A Sportyvna Square, Gulliver Shopping Mall. 12 p.m. – 2 a.m.

Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn can be reached at [email protected].