Putin is disgraced in the vast wine cellars of the former Soviet republic

Hitler’s right-hand man Hermann Goering survived the cut. His wine glasses – part of a collection captured as trophies by the Soviet army at the end of World War II and stored in a labyrinthine underground cellar in Moldova – are still on display.

Then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2013 visit to the former Soviet republic also houses 460 bottles of the gift, stored in his name in a hole in the giant tunnel system. (Department of State they reported the value (It’s $8,339.50, which may explain why Mr. Kerry chose to leave them behind.)

But Russian President Vladimir V. Putin visited the state-owned cellars twice Cricova Wineryexpelled. His wine bottles, along with his photograph, were unearthed in a vast complex of underground tunnels that twist and turn for 75 miles beneath the vineyards north of Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

After Mr. Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moldova’s neighbor, in 2022, the winery “has a lot of unanswered questions about why he’s still here,” said director Sorin Maslo.

Mr. Maslow said that Mr. Putin’s wine collection, which was given to him by the former communist president of Moldova, was not destroyed. He added that the bottles had been moved to a dark, sealed corner of the basement so that “nobody would mess with it.”

For a country that takes its viticulture very seriously, the expulsion of Mr. Putin’s bottles signaled a stark divorce in a long-strained relationship that Moldova recently declared doomed to irreconcilable differences.

It was part of a decisive breakthrough that led voters to back him, albeit by a slim majority, in October. Amendment of the Constitution of Moldova closing the country’s exit from Moscow’s sphere of influence and closer integration with Europe.

The course was first set in 2006, when Russia, formerly Moldova’s biggest wine export market, imposed a two-year ban on imports from Cricova and other Moldovan wineries amid an early spat between Moscow and Chisinau.

At the time, Russia argued that the ban was necessary to protect consumers from impurities, but it was enacted in response to Moldova’s demand that Russia stop supporting the Transnistrian region.

The following year, Russia lifted the ban on Moldovan wine, but reimposed it in 2013 after Moldova expressed a desire for closer ties with the European Union.

The 2006 embargo forced Moldovan winemakers to look to the West for markets, convincing them that “the future for us is definitely not Russia,” said Stefan Iamandi, the company’s director. National Office of Grapes and Wine in Chisinau. Russia, which used to make up 80 percent of Moldovan wine sold abroad, today buys 2 percent, and more than 50 percent goes to the European Union. This meant moving away from the sugary “semi-sweet” wines produced for Soviet tastes to high-quality wines that regularly won international awards.

Another former Soviet republic, Georgia, was subject to a similar ban in 2006. its winemakersalso to start looking West.

For centuries, wine has played a major role in Moldova’s relationship with Russia, and until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the two parts of the same country had both a lubricating and sometimes poisoned relationship.

There are traces of grape cultivation in Moldova stretching back thousands of yearsand in the 14th century began to export large quantities of wine to Russia. This trade expanded dramatically during the Soviet Union, when vineyards in Moldova and Georgia supplied most of the wine consumed in Russia.

Moldovan wine had a particularly good reputation. It became a curse in 1985 when the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, identified alcoholism as one of the Soviet Union’s most serious problems and overzealous Communist Party officials ordered the destruction of vineyards in Moldova, Georgia and Crimea. Claiming that the grapes were needed to make juice, Moldova uprooted some grapes but left most intact.

Before that, Moscow and Moldova were tied by drinking.

In 1966, when the Russian cosmonaut and first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, visited the Soviet republic, then called Moldova, he spent two days at the Cricova Winery, where he, like other visitors, was offered a wine tasting.

According to legend, it was so delicious that it had to be carried away in a stupor.

Mr. Maslow said this was not true, insisting that “Gagarin was not drunk” and was delighted with the quality of the wine.

Unlike Mr. Putin, Mr. Gagarin was not decommissioned and is still commemorated with a photograph and a plaque in Krikova’s underground cellar. A handwritten thank you note he left at the end of his 1966 visit is proudly displayed on the wall: “There are many fine wines in these cellars,” he wrote. “Even the most adventurous person will find a wine here to suit their taste.”

There are certainly many to choose from. Located in the shafts and winding tunnels of a former limestone mine, the large wine cellar holds 1.2 million bottles. Tunnels lined with wine racks, barrels and large wooden barrels are part of the sprawling underground city. It has a wine shop for tourists, a movie theater, and rich tasting and banquet halls for high-end guests, which are visited by tens of thousands of tourists every year.

Tunnels dug for limestone miners turned into streets, each named after a type of wine – local varieties such as Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Champagne and Feteasca. There are street signs and traffic lights. Electric trolleys transport winery employees and visitors around the labyrinth. The temperature is constant at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is always the same.

Equally constant is the grueling labor of a team of workers who spend each day methodically turning over bottles of sparkling wine stored deep underground on high shelves. The movement ensures that the sediment collects in the neck and is easily removed before the final bottling. The bottle turners are all women because men, Cricova management decided, get bored too easily and take too many breaks.

Lybov Zolotko, who practices this work by twisting his wrists in a bucket of sand, said that he turns at least 30,000 bottles a day. It’s boring work, he admitted, “but you get used to it” — and it pays a steady salary in a country where stable jobs are hard to come by.

Another Moldovan winery, Miles Jrhas longer tunnels – they stretch 150 miles – but Cricova’s cellars have had more high-profile visitors, including Mr Putin, who celebrated his 50th birthday; President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky; and Angela Merkel, who is still the chancellor of Germany.

Tatiana Ursu, who has worked at Cricova for 30 years, has hosted high-profile guests in underground tasting rooms and banquet halls. According to him, in 2002, the visit of Mr. Putin, who had an excellent relationship with the then President of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, was particularly warm. democratically elected head of state of the Communist Party after the fall of communism.

Ms. Ursu added that the trip was a source of pride for the winery, but that the apparently mild-mannered man she met in 2002 had only been in the Kremlin for two years. visited – has since opposed Moldova.

Mr. Voronin gave the Russian president a bottle of wine in the shape of a crocodile, he recalled.

Ms. Ursu recalled that Mr. Putin and other members of the Russian delegation did not drink too much and left a good impression on their Moldovan hosts.

“They were all friends at the time. It was a different time,” he said.