Massandra

Massandra is the winery above Yalta, on the South Coast of Crimea. Its cellars, a block of seven tunnels each 150 metres long cut into the hillside, were built in 1894 to 1897 on the orders of Prince Lev Golitsyn. The winery was nationalised in 1922, and its collection, about a million bottles, reaches back to a sherry of the 1775 harvest.

Its main cellars aged and bottled wine made at the association's estate wineries along the South Coast. It made its name on sweet and fortified wines: Muscats and other dessert wines, white and red ports among them the South Coast ports, and Madeira- and sherry-style wines. In 2009 it became a state concern under Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers, which it remains under Ukrainian law.

After Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, the occupation authorities seized the winery. In December 2015 its new management put about 13,000 wines from the collection up for auction, and Ukraine's agriculture ministry warned that selling this national heritage was a crime. In December 2020 the winery was sold to Yuzhny Proekt, a subsidiary of Bank Rossiya.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called the sale legally void, and Ukraine's prosecutor's office for Crimea is investigating the seizure as a war crime. The occupation-run enterprise has been under EU, Canadian and US sanctions since 2014 and 2015, and Ukraine extended its own sanctions to the new company in 2021.