ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280048
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: TBILISI, GEORGIA
SOURCE: CHRIS BIRD ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUCTION HOUSES would love to get their hands on those bottles. But each offer is met with a ``nyet.''
The neat rows of bottles that once graced the table of Joseph Stalin lie in a dark vault underneath Tbilisi's No. 1 Wine Factory, covered in black grime and thick cobwebs.
But the collection of 350-odd bottles is far from forgotten. In it, Western auctioneers see a valuable sale. And many Georgians, including the factory director who refuses to let the auctioneers have it, see their cultural heritage.
For a dictator of the proletariat, Stalin kept a select and well-stocked cellar.
Several bottles of 1929 Hennessy cognac lie beside gently aging malt whisky from Scotland and Booth's High and Dry gin. Although many of the wines have gone bad, the hard stuff is still drinkable.
The collection was found at Stalin's dacha outside Moscow, where the wily Georgian is said to have enjoyed drinking the quivering members of his Politburo under the table, then making them do humiliating dances.
Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for three decades, carrying out ruthless purges that claimed millions of lives. Most experts now agree he is perhaps the worst mass murderer of modern times. But many older Russians still revere him as the man who led the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germany.
The liquor collection was found after Stalin's death in 1953 and moved to the wine factory's Moscow office for safekeeping, said Levan Demetradze, the factory director. Demetradze took it to Georgia in 1979.
``They were mostly Russians at the Moscow offices who didn't care about the collection,'' he said. ``I thought it was important to preserve Georgia's heritage.''
Now he is doing his part to keep it from being taken away. When he mentioned the liquor at a 1992 Berlin trade fair to representatives of Sotheby's, the London auction house, Demetradze said, ``they beat me back to Tbilisi.'' But they left empty-handed.
``They wanted to buy, but we didn't want to sell,'' he said.
Demetradze said the dictator's drinking habits were generally moderate and his tastes were simple.
``He always had a bottle of Georgian wine on the dinner table,'' Demetradze said.
Meanwhile, the ``red monarch'' is doing his bit to help Georgian wine makers with the transition from communism to capitalism. Another wine factory is turning out bottles of ``Stalin'' wine, with a portrait of the dictator stamped on the sides.
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