The Georgian government has announced that they will auction part of an incredibly rare collection of wine bottles, which had been guarded for decades in a wine vault in Tbilisi and belonged to Josef Stalin, born in Georgia, who led the Soviet Union between 1924 until his death in 1953.
The site of the former Wine Factory No. 1 will allow people to study and catalogue a collection for the first time in decades, estimated in over 20,000 bottles, who belonged to Stalin. The leader of the Soviet Union was a wine collector, and owned some bottles that are now over two centuries old, belonging to the Russian Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II, whose collection was seized after the Russian Revolution, and some are even believed to have belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte, allegedly seized during the French retreat from Moscow, according to News.AZ.
Some of the wine bottles may be auctioned, and the plan is to use the money from the auction to open a wine education school in Georgia, and put the country "on the collectors' map", said Irakli Gilauri, the owner of Gilauri Wines, who worked with Georgia's agriculture minister on the project (via Reuters).