Stalin's Wine Cellar

Thu, 6 May 2021

In Travel Time next week, presented by Yvonne Hazell, we get to enjoy the picaresque adventures that led John Baker to write Stalin's Wine Cellar, recently published by Penguin Books. Poking about in the bowels of a dripping wet cellar in Georgia twenty years ago, after negotiating a look-see with the leather-coated black mafia of the period, John discovered a treasure trove of 19th century wines, many of which came from the private reserve of Tsar Nicolas 11. Stalin himself had a nose for the finest French vintages which occupied another whole floor of the underground cellar complex. 

Yvonne, an avid reader who gets through 3 or 4 books a week, has been with 2RPH for 27 years. She recently met John at a book signing and swiftly enlisted him for a Travel Time interview. An intrepid traveler since the 1960s, Yvonne cruised the Mediterranean with a crew of famous archeologists, and taught English in Athens and Romania before falling in love and moving to Australia. "I was the last of the ten pound poms," she laughs. "Australia got it's money's worth. I've had 4 children and 7 grandchildren." Yvonne had a career in travel, and then real estate before retiring, and plans to visit both Antarctica and Greece in 2022.

"Don't give the end of the book away," she warns us. "John really wanted to buy some of the wine he found in Stalin's cellar - he was given twelve bottles put away in 1847 - but what happened to the rest of it? You'll have to listen to find out!"

It's pleasing to note that Stalin's Wine Cellar has been shortlisted for the ABA Nielsen Booksellers Award for Non-fiction Book of the Year alongside Julia Baird's Phosphorescence; The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku; Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala & Julia Gillard; Beatrix Bakes by Natalie Paull; and In Praise of Veg by Alice Zalevtsky. 

Travel Time broadcasts every week at 2.30pm on Wednesdays and repeats at 8pm on Saturdays. This episode will broadcast 19 June.