STALIN'S WINE CELLAR by John Baker

If you like books with any or all of the following - history, travel, deception, politics, lost treasure, secrecy, and of course wine but not necessarily essential, then you will love this. John Baker is a wine expert of, it would seem, some repute in his native Australia and elsewhere who also happens to be an excellent raconteur of his adventures in the underground wine world. Specialising mainly in top end, rare and antiquarian wines, when this book opens in the 1990s,  he is the owner/operator of a wine shop in the wealthy area of Double Bay in Sydney. With his trusty side kick Kevin they make a great team in finding and investigating the provenance of wines, getting themselves into possibly shady business dealings with high flyers, with nothing more really than their gut feelings and extraordinary knowledge to keep their reputations and wallets intact.

One day John and Kevin find themselves sitting at the top of a Sydney high rise being told a crazy story about a wine cellar in Tbilisi, Georgia formerly part of the USSR, that used to belong to Josef Stalin. A very large part of these thousands and thousands of bottles apparently belonged to Tsar Nicholas II and dated as far back as the 1860s. All untouched since the 1950s at the very latest when Stalin died. This is like the Holy Grail of wine. Now the owners of the winery in Tbilisi want to sell the stash, and somehow John and Kevin have become the experts to do it. Do they want the job or not.? Is this a silly question or not?

What follows is truly outstanding. Not just in the facts of what happens over the next few years as the saga of the cellar slowly and tediously drags on, with the surprising twists in it, but in the way John Baker tells the story. Like a wide eyed child, he and Kevin have no idea what they are in for when they board that plane in Sydney airport whisking them to the other side of the world. To describe Tbilisi as the wild west is a hilarious understatement and the reader is just as mesmerised by it all as the Australians. We meet George - mysterious and unpredictable lead negotiator, a number of gun carrying hench men, or are they really something else? John and Kevin are captivated by the landscape of the city, the beautiful rundown old buildings, the spirit of the people. And of course the wine cellar - what a totally bewildering and mystical place that turns out to be, requiring our two heroes to draw on all their knowledge, gut instinct and subterfuge skills to find out what is really there. 

This had me gripped from the first page, had me laughing and smiling at the antics of many of the players, plenty of photos to look at and enjoy. From Sydney to Russia, to London to France. It is a ride and a half, and I fully expect the highlight of the careers of these two characters.