Chance to have a drink on Stalin - at £4,000 a bottle

Wines from the cellars of 19th-century Russian czars - and Joseph Stalin - are set to fetch more than £500,000 at auction in London.

The rare vintages, worth up to £4,000 a bottle, are from the Imperial winery at Massandra, near Yalta in the Crimea. Many bear Czar Nicholas II's seal.

About 150 wines will be sold in 400 lots at Sotheby's on 3 December.

The Massandra cellars, recognised as the world's finest, were dug into a mountainside in the 1890s and stocked with local fortified and dessert wines.

Chief winemaker was Prince Lev Sergervich Golitzin, and many of the secrets of his legendary creations, including "Honey of Altae Pastures" and "Seventh Heaven", went to the grave with him.

Joseph Stalin was so impressed with the collection he added to it, and during the Second World War hid the lot in case invading Nazis should find it.