Wine exports were flat at $188.7 million, and Russia took 63.5% of it

The headline is a flat year, but the two halves of it move differently. Shipments to Russia fell 5.54% by weight while the value held almost exactly, which means the average price per tonne rose, by the article's calculation about 5.53%. That is the better of the two ways for an export line to shrink: selling less at a higher price protects margins in a way that selling the same volume at a discount does not. It is also a reminder that a tonnage figure and a dollar figure can tell opposite-sounding stories about the same trade.

At about 63.5% of export value, Russia is not one market among many; it is the market, with everything else sharing roughly 68.9 million dollars. For a winery that concentration is a commercial fact to manage rather than a political argument, and for anyone building a wine-tourism business in Kakheti it is a reason to look at where the visitors come from as a separate question from where the bottles go. The two do not overlap as much as people assume.

These are Geostat's preliminary trade figures and they get revised, sometimes by enough to change a small percentage either way. A 0.6% decline is well inside the range where a revision could turn it into a small rise, so the safe reading is that exports were broadly level rather than that they fell. The figures also cover wine of fresh grapes by weight in tonnes, not bottles, which is why bottle counts quoted elsewhere will not reconcile neatly with these numbers.