The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine welcomes the decision of the San Francisco International Wine Competition (SFIWC), organized by The Tasting Alliance, to disqualify 15 Russia‑based wineries from its 2025 competition and to dispose of their wines after determining they are ineligible under U.S. sanctions imposed following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russian officials and media had hailed their admission to the San Francisco competition as a political “breakthrough” and evidence that “barriers are falling”, openly boasting about complex logistics and grey schemes to get the wines into the US despite restrictions on Russian alcohol. According to publicly available Russian sources, the wineries included several elite estates linked to the so‑called “wine empire” of Vladimir Putin on the Black Sea.

The diplomats of the Consulate General of Ukraine in San Francisco, the representatives of the Ukrainian community, and partners in the California wine sector drew attention to potential sanctions breaches and the Russian media reports and shared this information with the organizers.

As a result, the San Francisco International Wine Competition determined that the Russian wines were mistakenly accepted into its 2025 international competition and concluded that these wineries are not eligible to participate due to U.S. sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The competition has formally disallowed the Russian wineries, their entries will not be judged.

Russian officials tried to present San Francisco as proof that there is ‘no isolation’ for Putin’s wines. Instead, this decision shows the opposite: sanctions work, and respected American institutions are not prepared to become a showcase for the Kremlin while Ukrainian cities are bombed and Ukrainian vineyards are occupied or destroyed.