SimpleWine

On September 16, 2011, Maxim Kashirin received the phone call that saved his company. For four months, Russian authorities had refused to renew Simple’s alcohol license—a death sentence for a wine importer. “At all levels they told me: the decision has been made to kill Simple,” Maxim recalls. He still doesn’t know why they changed their minds.

From Post-Soviet Chaos to Premium Positioning

SimpleWine’s story begins in the turbulent aftermath of the Soviet collapse. In 1994, when Maxim Kashirin (a metallurgical engineer) and Anatoly Korneev (a philologist who studied wine in France) founded their import business, Russia’s wine market barely existed. The Il Patio restaurant chain was importing Italian wines at premium prices, demonstrating that Moscow’s emerging wealthy class would pay for quality. Maxim and Anatoly saw the opportunity: Russia needed wine education as much as wine itself.

Their insight proved prescient. While competitors focused on importing and distribution, Simple built what they called an “ecosystem.” In 1999—just one year after nearly going bankrupt—they opened Enotria, Russia’s first professional wine school. The logic was ruthlessly practical: trained sommeliers would create demand for the wines Simple imported. By 2024, Enotria had graduated over 7,000 students, many now working in restaurants across Russia specifying SimpleWine products.

The company’s average ticket of 5,000 rubles ($55 USD)—ten times the Russian market average—reflects this education-first strategy. SimpleWine doesn’t compete with mass-market chains like Ароматный мир (Aromatny Mir). Instead, it occupies the “accessible premium” space: serious wine for enthusiasts who aren’t yet collectors. With 5,000+ SKUs from 478 producers across 45 countries, the assortment rivals boutique specialists while maintaining the convenience of 100+ retail locations.

But premium positioning alone doesn’t explain SimpleWine’s three-decade survival. The Russian market has experienced four existential economic crises since 1994. Simple not only survived all four but documented an extraordinary pattern: each crisis response became faster than the last.

The Crisis That Nearly Ended Everything

August 17, 1998. The Russian government defaulted on its debt. The ruble collapsed fourfold overnight—from 6 to 24 rubles per U.S. dollar. For SimpleWine, the mathematics were brutal: the company owed all its suppliers in foreign currency while all its customers owed in suddenly worthless rubles. Four-year-old Simple’s assets—expressed as customer receivables—had just devalued by 75%.

“We got into a tough situation: we owed all suppliers in foreign currency, while all our clients owed us rubles,” Maxim explained years later. “The fourfold devaluation meant all our assets, expressed as client debts, were devalued, and the market collapsed at the same time. Nobody needed wine, especially four times more expensive.”

The company stopped shipping entirely. For two months—August through October 1998—Simple was functionally dead. Maxim was 31 years old. Anatoly was 29. They held a meeting to decide whether to close or fight. The sensible decision was to walk away. They chose to fight.

What followed was unglamorous survival work. Maxim and Anatoly restructured foreign currency debts through direct negotiation with suppliers, accepting non-cash settlements when necessary. One distributor who couldn’t repay debt offered a €30,000 whisky bottle shaped like a bird. “Sorry, nothing else I can do,” he said. Twenty-six years later, that bottle still sits in SimpleWine’s Moscow headquarters—a monument to the crisis when premium positioning created options that currency couldn’t.

Sales resumed in October 1998. By fall 1999, the company had fully recovered. More significantly, the crisis taught Maxim and Anatoly that reinvestment mattered more than extraction. For the next decade, they reinvested every ruble of profit rather than taking dividends. That discipline funded the expansion from a single import business into a vertically integrated wine ecosystem.

When the Government Tried to “Kill Simple”

The 1998 crisis was economic. The 2011 crisis was political—and far more mysterious.

In May 2011, Russia’s Federal Tax Service and Rosalkogolregulirovanie (the alcohol regulator) coordinated to deny Simple’s operating license renewal. Without this license, the company legally could not import or distribute alcohol. For an importer, this is instant death.

What made the crisis surreal was the absence of leverage. Typically, regulatory persecution in Russia involves ransom—someone demands a stake, brands, or cash. But no one came. “I sat like [the spy] Stirlitz laying out portraits,” Maxim recalled, “expecting someone to walk in. No one walked in.”

At every government level, Maxim was told the same thing: “Don’t go, don’t ask. Simple will be closed. Your company is finished. The issue is decided.” He never learned why. There was no public scandal, no stated political rationale. Someone wanted Simple dead.

Maxim’s response was grimly methodical. He personally addressed every cited deficiency in the license application. The regulators rejected him anyway—without grounds. He applied again. Rejected again. For four months, the company existed in legal limbo while he persisted through a process that offered no path to resolution.

On September 16, 2011, the license was granted. Maxim calls it “probably the best day” in company history. He still doesn’t know what changed or why the attack stopped.

But the episode crystalized a survival principle that would define SimpleWine’s strategy: control what you can control. Maxim couldn’t control Russian regulatory caprice, but he could control supply chains, production, customer relationships, and vertical integration. The more the company owned directly, the less vulnerable it became to external disruption.

Building Crisis Resilience Through Vertical Integration

The pattern became clear over subsequent crises. In December 2014, when the euro reached 100 rubles and Western sanctions began, SimpleWine paused shipments for just one week—down from two months in 1998. The company raised prices 18% and still achieved 21% revenue growth that year.

By February 2022, when sanctions intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, SimpleWine’s pause lasted two days.

The improvement wasn’t luck. It was architecture. Between 2011 and 2022, Simple systematically integrated backward and forward:

Backward integration (production): In 2014, the company acquired Bertinga, a 16.4-hectare estate in Chianti Classico, Italy. The same year, it founded Shilda winery in Georgia’s Kakheti region (120 hectares). These weren’t vanity projects. Bertinga wines now score 92-97 points from James Suckling and made Forbes’ Top 100 Iconic Wineries list in 2025. More importantly, Simple controlled a portion of its supply.

Forward integration (retail + gastronomy): The company expanded from wholesale distribution into direct-to-consumer retail, eventually operating 100+ SimpleWine vinotekas across eight Russian cities. It also moved into gastronomy: Grand Cru restaurant received a Michelin star in 2022 and Wine Spectator’s “Two Glasses” award three times. The restaurant serves as both revenue stream and brand showcase.

Lateral integration (education + media): Enotria wine school received state licensing to issue diplomas in 2017, formalizing its role in training Russia’s sommelier class. Simple also operates Simple Wine News magazine and Wine Stage media properties. These aren’t marketing expenses—they’re demand generation infrastructure.

The result is a business model where 60% of revenue comes from B2B channels (31% HoReCa, 25% retail chains, 6% regional distribution) and 40% from direct B2C (owned stores, online, VIP memberships). When one channel faces disruption—as B2B did during 2022 sanctions—the others absorb the shock.

The Future: Franchising Premium Without Diluting It

By 2024, SimpleWine had reached a milestone: 100+ stores, 31.6 billion rubles in revenue ($350M USD), and 2,500 employees. Moscow’s share of revenue had declined from 75% to approximately 60% as the company expanded into St. Petersburg (12+ stores), Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Ekaterinburg, Tyumen, and Novosibirsk.

The next challenge is scaling without ownership. In 2024, Simple launched “Wine & Whiskey by Simple,” a franchise model allowing regional partners to operate vinotekas under the Simple brand. This is a delicate maneuver for a company whose competitive advantage is quality control. Franchising means trusting partners to maintain premium standards Simple spent 30 years building.

The company plans to open 20-30 stores annually, mixing owned and franchised locations. Ownership remains private—Maxim holds 80%, Anatoly 20%—with explicit rejection of IPO or outside investment. “We want to earn, but also to build something,” Maxim explained. For a company that survived governmental assassination attempts and four economic collapses, independence appears non-negotiable.

What makes SimpleWine’s trajectory remarkable isn’t just survival—it’s acceleration. Most businesses that weather four existential crises emerge cautious, scarred, defensive. Simple emerged faster. The company that needed two months to restart shipments in 1998 now restarts in two days. Premium positioning provided the margin to survive crises; vertical integration provided the speed to recover from them.

In Russia’s turbulent market, that combination has proven more valuable than scale, more durable than connections, and more sustainable than speculation. SimpleWine didn’t just survive 30 years—it documented precisely how crisis resilience is built.

Last updated: March 15, 2026