For decades it remained hidden from the public in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, but now the wine cellar of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has been opened for the first time. The space contains approximately 40,000 rare wines, some of which are more than two hundred years old. Georgia will auction the collection to fund, among other things, a wine school.
Cobwebs, dusty shelves and a musty, sweet smell: the dark basement is a time capsule. American collector Victor Chen traveled from Texas to Tbilisi especially to view the find. “It feels like you are Indiana Jones opening a hidden cave,” he told Reuters.
Stalin, born in Georgia, headed the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953. In addition to being a ruthless dictator, he was an avid wine lover. He mainly collected exclusive French Bordeaux and wines from his native country.
Wine of the Tsars
According to Georgian winemaker Irakli Gilauri, part of the collection even goes back to the Russian tsar family Romanov. After the 1917 revolution, communists plundered their enormous wine cellar in St. Petersburg. “When Stalin later came to power, he realized how valuable that collection was,” says Gilauri in a BBC podcast. “He closed the cellar again and added his favorite Georgian wines.”
Out of fear of the advancing Nazis, Stalin had the collection split into three during the Second World War. Some moved to Crimea, another to Georgia. To this day, every trace of the third part is missing.
Because the bottles were auctioned in Crimea in the 1990s, the cellar in Tbilisi is probably the last intact remnant of the historic Tsar’s collection. Not everything is still drinkable. “Probably about 80 percent of the wine has been lost,” Gilauri estimates.
Yet there are still thousands of bottles left that are worth gold to collectors.
