Eva's Wine Cellar

Half a century ago the Soviet masters of Moldova built one of the world's greatest wine stores in a warren of old mining tunnels deep inside the limestone hills - 70 miles (113km) of subterranean chambers housing more than a million bottles.

Cricova's marketing director Alexandru Alexeev gives me a guided tour. He stops his golf buggy beside an alcove filled with dusty bottles. "This is Herman Goering's private collection, taken by the Red Army from Berlin in 1945," he says.

I grab a bottle of the Mosel white, rub off the dust and hold it to the light wondering if this had been touched by Hitler's henchman. It's murky, bits of cork appear to be floating in the liquid.

"Don't remove the dirt, even the dust is valuable," Alexeev admonishes. "How valuable?" I ask. "Well, each bottle is worth £15,000 and there are 129 of them," he says.

But it's not Herman Goering's wine that is on Alexeev's mind today, it's the collection belonging to a contemporary figure - a certain Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin has his own cave in the Cricova tunnels. Every statesman who visits the winery is accorded the honour of a personal collection, but Mr Putin's stash is noticeably bigger.