The New Yorker:

In the Cold War, Stalin ordered that a winery be set up in an old gypsum mine in Bakhmut; now Russian soldiers are using the prized cuvée to flush toilets.

By Boris Fishman

At a benefit concert for Ukrainian children, at Carnegie Hall, Nathalie Lysenko and Gayle Corrigan walked up to the bar and paid forty-six dollars for two glasses of a Ukrainian sparkling wine that Lysenko had helped smuggle out of Bakhmut under Russian bombardment.

“I didn’t realize they were charging for it,” Corrigan said.

“It’s a good cause,” Lysenko said.

Lysenko, who is tall and has large, round eyes, is the export manager for Artwinery, which until recently was one of the largest wineries in the former Soviet Union. Corrigan, who wore a black cocktail dress, is her American importer. Before the Russians occupied Bakhmut, the city was a major center of sparkling-wine production. During the Cold War, Stalin, facing a champagne ban, ordered the establishment of a high-end facility there, in a former gypsum mine more than two hundred feet underground. Classical music, which was thought to be calming for the wines and the workers, played twenty-four hours a day. In May, 2023, the music stopped.

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