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

Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, survived the wound. His wine bottles – part of a collection seized as souvenirs by the Soviet Army at the end of World War II and deposited in a labyrinthine underground vault in Moldova – are still on display.

There is also a gift of 460 bottles given in 2013 to then-Secretary of State John Kerry when he visited the former Soviet republic, kept in his name in a small compartment in the vast tunnel system. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs I mentioned its value for $8,339.50, which may explain why Mr. Kerry chose to leave it behind.)

But Russian President Vladimir Putin, who twice visited the state-run cellars Crikova Winerywas denied. His wine bottles, along with his image, have been removed from view in the massive complex of underground tunnels that twist and turn more than 75 miles beneath vineyards north of the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.

After Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Moldova’s neighbor, Ukraine, in 2022, “we got a lot of questions that we couldn’t answer about why he was still here,” said Soren Maslow, the winery’s director.

Maslow said Mr. Putin’s wine collection, which was a gift to him from Moldova’s former communist president, was not destroyed. He added that the bottles had been moved to a dark, locked corner of the cellar so that “no one would have to handle them.”

For a country that takes viticulture seriously, banning bottles of Putin was a clear letter of divorce in a long-strained relationship, which Moldova recently declared was doomed due to irreconcilable differences.

It was part of a decisive break that led voters in October to support the constitution, albeit by a narrow majority. Change of the Constitution of Moldova To secure the country’s exit from Moscow’s sphere of influence and align more closely with Europe.

This path was first set in 2006 when Russia, previously Moldova’s largest wine export market, imposed a two-year ban on imports from Crikova and other Moldova wineries during an early quarrel between Moscow and Chisinau.

Russia claimed at the time that the ban was necessary to protect consumers from impurities, but it was widely seen as retaliation for Moldova’s demand that Russia stop supporting Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria.

Russia lifted the ban on Moldovan wine the following year, but reimposed it in 2013 after Moldova expressed its desire to establish closer relations with the European Union.

The 2006 ban forced Moldova’s winemakers to look to the West for markets and convinced them that “the future for us is definitely not Russia,” said Stefan Iamandi, the institute’s director. National Office of Vine and Wine In Chisinau. Russia, which once accounted for 80 percent of Moldovan wine sold abroad, today buys 2 percent, more than 50 percent of which goes to the European Union. This means moving away from sugary, “semi-sweet” wines produced to suit Soviet tastes, to high-quality wines that regularly win international awards.

Georgia, another former Soviet republic, was subjected to a similar ban in 2006, prompting… WinemakersAlso, to start looking west.

For centuries, wine played a large role in Moldova’s relationship with Russia, greasing and sometimes poisoning relations between the two parts of the same country until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In Moldova there are traces of grape growing It extends back thousands of yearsIt began to export wine to Russia in large quantities in the fourteenth century. This trade expanded greatly during the Soviet period when vineyards in Moldova and Georgia provided much of the wine consumed in Russia.

Moldovan wine has a particularly good reputation. This turned into a curse when the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, described alcoholism as one of the most serious problems facing the Soviet Union in 1985, and overzealous Communist Party officials ordered the destruction of vineyards in Moldova, Georgia and Crimea. Moldova tore down some vines but left most intact, arguing that it needed the grapes to make fruit juice.

Before that, relations between Moscow and Moldova were linked to wine.

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

Legend has it that he tasted so much that he had to hold it in amazement.

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

Unlike Mr. Putin, Mr. Gagarin’s concert was not canceled and is still being celebrated in Krikova’s underground basement with a picture and a plaque. Proudly displayed on the wall is a handwritten thank-you note he left at the end of his 1966 visit: “In these cellars there is a great abundance of fine wines,” he wrote. “Even the most sensitive people will find here wines to suit them.”

There are certainly plenty to choose from. The vast wine cellar, tucked into the winding shafts and tunnels of a former limestone mine, holds 1.2 million bottles. The tunnels, lined with wine racks and large wooden barrels, are part of a sprawling subterranean city. It has a wine shop for tourists, who are visited by tens of thousands every year, a movie theatre, tasting rooms and luxurious banquets for visiting dignitaries.

Tunnels dug for limestone miners became streets, each named after a type of wine – Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Champagne and local varietals such as Vitiasca. There are street signs and traffic lights. Electric carts transport winery workers and visitors around the maze. The temperature is constant at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air humidity is always the same.

Nor does the hard work of a team of workers who spend every day deep underground methodically turning over bottles of sparkling wine stored on high shelves. The movement ensures that sediment collects at the neck and can be easily removed before final bottling. All the bottle-stirring workers are women, because, Cricova’s management decided, men get bored easily and take many breaks.

Lipov Zolotko, who trained for the job by wrapping her wrists in a bucket of sand, said she turns at least 30,000 bottles a day. She admitted it was boring work, “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, Little MilesIt has longer tunnels – stretching 150 miles – but Krikova has received more high-profile visitors, including Mr. Putin, who celebrated his 50th birthday in the hotel’s basements; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; And Angela Merkel, when she was still Chancellor of Germany.

Tatiana Urso, who has worked at Cricova for 30 years, hosted a group of VIPs in the underground tasting rooms and banquet halls. She said that a visit by Putin in 2002 was particularly warm, with whom she had an excellent relationship with the president of Moldova at the time, Vladimir Voronin, Europe’s first European president. The democratically elected head of state of the Communist Party After the collapse of communism.

Ms. Urso added that the visit had been a source of pride for the winery, but “it’s not that anymore” given that the seemingly mild-mannered man she met in 2002 – who had only spent two years in the Kremlin when she visited – has since turned against it. Moldova.

I remembered that Mr. Voronin gave the Russian President a wine bottle in the shape of a crocodile.

Ms. Urso recalled that Mr. Putin and others in the Russian delegation did not drink much and made a good impression on their Moldovan hosts.

“They were all friends back then. It was a different time,” she said.