The primary winemaking plant in the Shirin Village is operating at less than a tenth of its capacity due to a poor harvest.
Photo: Kazpravda. kz / Yuri Becker
Maxim-aka — as the head of the peasant farm «Muslim” Maksut Massimov is respectfully called here — has already celebrated his 80th birthday. But it’s hard to call him an old man. He doesn't look his age. A strong, imposing man, though obviously retired, he has spent nearly his entire life cultivating and supplying product to the enterprise, which was established here back in the last century — a factory for processing technical grape varietiesю
«I arrived here on September 11, 1968,” Maksut Massimov recounts. «Back then, it was bare land, almost no houses — only seven or eight families lived here. The Charyn Fruit and Grape State Farm was officially established on May 5, 1967. I came here straight from university and have lived here ever since — I know everything, I remember everything. At that time, we planted 180 hectares every year, of which about a hundred hectares were grapes. Gradually, the vineyards expanded to 750 hectares. The main varieties were Rkatsiteli, Kuldzhinsky, and Riesling. These were the grapes we processed. The state farm produced several types of wine: Portwein No. 11, Portwein No. 12, and brandy spirit. Rkatsiteli was also used to make wine base for sparkling wine — which was made here too. Yields were high. On average, we harvested 50−60 centners of grapes per hectare, and the best plots yielded 110−120. In those days, the state farm thrived and salaries were good.”
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fortunes of the state farm and the grape processing plant sharply declined. By 1997, the then-operating enterprise, PC «Shirin,” was drowning in debt. That’s when Bakhus Joint-Stock Company stepped in, buying out a share of the still-functioning enterprise.
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