Georgia opens Stalin’s wine cellar

Tbilisi has opened for the first time the wine cellar once associated with Joseph Stalin, a vault that holds about 40,000 bottles and is now at the center of a government plan to raise money for a new world-class wine school in Georgia.

The collection, kept in the Georgian capital, includes rare wines from Georgia and France, some dating to the early 19th century. Officials say the cellar reflects several layers of history at once: Soviet rule, imperial Russian holdings and Georgia’s own long wine tradition. The bottles are now owned by the Georgian government, which plans to sell them at auction and use the proceeds to support wine education in a country that sees itself as one of the birthplaces of wine.

Georgia has archaeological evidence of winemaking that goes back at least 8,000 years, according to officials cited by Reuters. The country also has about 500 native grape varieties, including Rkatsiteli, Saperavi, Mtsvani and Aleksandrouli. That last grape is used to make Khvanchkara, a red wine long linked to Stalin and said by some accounts to have been among his favorites.

The cellar’s opening has drawn attention from collectors abroad as well as from people interested in Soviet history. The vault itself is described as dusty and dimly lit, with cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, but it contains bottles tied not only to Stalin but also to the Romanovs, the Russian imperial family. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Soviet authorities seized the imperial wine collection, and Stalin later became its custodian while adding his own preferred Georgian wines.

Among the bottles are wines from famous Bordeaux estates and others that once belonged to Tsar Alexander III and his son Nicholas II. The Georgian government says the auction is meant not only to monetize a historic collection but also to help build an institution that can train a new generation of winemakers and strengthen the country’s standing in global wine culture.