AZERBAIJAN 101

Despite a long history of wine production, this former Soviet republic in the Caucasus is a small player on the wine stage. But that could now be changing

- ANTHONY ROSE

Azerbaijan is a faraway place of which I confess I knew little more than that its capital, Baku, was the final European stop of the year on the Formula One circuit. I had some interesting reactions when I mentioned visiting. My sister thought I was joking when I sent greetings from Azerbaijan, and an Azerbaijani woman who's been married to a Londoner for six years told me that her husband still doesn’t know where the country is.

Sitting between the Black and Caspian seas, Azerbaijan participates in European institutions, such as the Council of Europe, and various European sporting competitions. In this way, it reinforces its ties with Europe, despite its geographic location at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia in the South Caucasus region, aka Transcaucasia. Roughly three million of its population of 10 million reside in the cosmopolitan capital of Baku on the Caspian sea coast. The economy is based on oil and gas, and the country is historically known as the ‘Land of Fire’, after the natural gas emissions seeping from its subterranean reserves.

German influence

Sitting at between about 38°N and 42°N, Azerbaijan is located at a similar latitude to Greece, southern Italy and Spain, and so is well within the northern hemisphere’s wine-producing band. Despite this, and despite the fact that grapes have been cultivated and wines produced in what is now Azerbaijan for thousands of years, the country lacks the sort of proud wine heritage claimed by neighbouring Armenia and Georgia, which between them occupy the zone generally accepted as being the world’s historical ‘cradle of wine’.