May 1st will go down in our history as a shameful date, we have returned to the Shah-Abbas or Soviet times, when homestead plots were allowed only for personal consumption, - this is how the fifth President of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, responds to the amendments to the Law on Wine and Vine, according to which the cultivation of a vineyard for entrepreneurial purposes will require a permit from the National Wine Agency.

As Zurabishvili writes on social networks, the said law will serve to destroy Georgian agriculture.

“May 1st will go down in our history as a shameful date: from today on, peasants are prohibited from growing vines on their own land “without the permission of the authorities” and from selling the grapes grown on it or the wine made from it. In other words, we have returned to the Shah-Abbas or Soviet times, when homestead plots were allowed only for personal consumption.

"This law directly serves to destroy Georgian agriculture and cause peasants to disappear or leave the country!" - Zurabishvili writes.