Tour of the winery Massandra

• of Massandra winery tour

It is unlikely that someone needs to say what the Crimean winery "Massandra".

One of the most famous wineries of the USSR and the Crimea, was built in 1897 by decree of Emperor Nicholas II, Prince Golitsyn, owns its vineyards all over the southern coast of Crimea from Foros to Sudak and produces strong, dessert and liqueur wines.

A huge enterprise, vast areas of vineyards in the best locations of the South Coast, multi-million dollar production volumes, unique and one of the largest wine collections in the world - all of this factory "Massandra".

Today, the story of the main floor of the plant in Yalta, in which I show and administrative offices, the factory and the laboratory, and the wine cellars and bottling line and storage, and even vintage canteen with set meals for 129 rubles ...

I'm not going to be a long story about the history of the plant, its historical landmarks and a lot of other information that can be easily found on the Internet.

In this post I will hold a virtual tour, after coming to the tasting of the standard ticket, you will be able to see only the 10th part of what can be seen here.

However, tour and tasting lasts a few hours and my tour lasted the whole day.

As I said, the plant was built in 1897 by Prince Lev Golitsyn, who specifically chose to plant the most comfortable place in accordance with technical requirements of storage and processing of wine, as well as the location relative to the location of the vineyard locations.

The choice fell on a site close to the then Yalta and which today bears the name of Massandra

In the center of the plant is a huge area, which are situated around the perimeter of the production and administrative offices. The excursion will begin with an administrative body

In spite of the 2015 administrative offices are stuck somewhere in 1995. This can be seen in everything - from the corridor to the office of CEO.

By the way, in recent months it smolders, it breaks the next round of the scandal regarding the previous management of the plant displacement due to the misuse of funds and factory banal waste of property, land and assets "Massandra"

of the meeting hall in the style of the Soviet era

To be honest, Yalta, to some extent even this is vintage Style a la the Soviet Union.

The Laboratory also looks vintage, but that there will be a brief period, t. To. In terms of its total refurbishment and modification as soon as possible

Samples from the collection during pereukuporki. T. k. Bottles are opened, some of them are sent to the laboratory for research of wine aging, and so on. D.

The analysis of samples of wines, which are currently located on the filling

Sampling

View from the roof of the administrative building of the tower to the Main ridge of Crimean mountains

In Yalta generally all is well with the views. This species is known to many tourists who visited the Massandra, t. To. It is from here that their short tour and tasting

in the administrative building of the plant type

The walls of many buildings beautifully entwined with ivy or vines

Login to the tasting rooms, cellars and store-collection

At the entrance to the store there is a small gallery with old artifacts from the world of wine. Especially interesting handmade ukuporivatel bottles, which can be and today successfully close the bottle stopper.

Scheme Massandra cellars.

Total factory 7 underground galleries, each of which length and width of 5 to 150 meters.

They always maintain a constant air temperature of 10-12 ° C, that is the best for aging wine.

The most famous and respected wine factory is the White Muscat Red Stone. The wine is named for the name of the place where the vineyards are broken grade white muscat.

In these tunnels, the wine is aged in oak barrels for 18 months before the fall into the bottle

After the wine is bottled, most of it is sent to warehouses and retail chains, and some is stored in galleries in a horizontal position in the so-called collection. As I mentioned yesterday, the collection is divided into the museum fund, which was discussed yesterday, advertising and Research Foundation and a commercial fund.

Commercial fund the most voluminous and all it holds about 1 million bottles of different brands and ages.

Wines from it are sold continuously replenishing a fresh copy. The commercial fund collection has absolutely all the issues of all kinds of wines for all the years of operation of the plant at least a few copies.

The older the wine, the fewer the number of bottles lies in the niche where it is stored. New wine, of course, occupy a niche completely.

The maximum capacity of 1 million bottles of tunnels, so to lay the collection of wine of the new harvest, you need to gradually release the other niche, selling old copies of them.

The bottles, which can not be sold from the collection and placed on permanent storage, marked with a sign on the sealing wax

In each tab, there is a special card with the name of the wine, the year of harvest and bottling, as well as with the marks of all the movements

For example, it reduces the tab Muscat Livadia White.

Next to the collection are tasting rooms for visitors

Then head to the production. About bottling endless pallet with an empty bottle.

Next tankers of wine arrived with a ready for bottling from one of the 8 wineries concern "Massandra"

In the shop filling bottles chime. First, the bottle is taken from the pallet and set the top of the automatic line

Cleaning

supply to the filling station

Capacity with a cork. Cork is only natural, produced from Portuguese cork

Pouring and capping

Next to the bottle cap and put on adhesive label

Plot brokerage. Here, in front of the light screen controller checks the absence of extraneous mechanical impurities

portion of the package

At the end of the tour heading for the canteen.

This is where the reign of the Soviet era

Feeling as if was in an old movie

The workers canteen like. Here, in their view, very sincere, and not expensive.

Here is a set lunch of borscht, chicken goulash with sauerkraut, boiled beets, stewed fruit and bread costs 129 rubles ..

In tomorrow's post will talk about areas where produce sherry and Madeira, which are very different from conventional wineries.