Massandra Winery sits in a forested valley just east of Yalta, partly concealed by the trees that keep its vast stone cellar at a constant cool temperature. Founded in 1894 under Prince Lev Golitsyn to supply the Romanov court, it became the Soviet Union's premier fine wine operation and still produces the fortified and dessert wines that made the region famous — Muscat, Port-style reds, Madeira, and Tokay.
Tours of the main cellar (one of the largest in the world, with three kilometers of tunnels holding up to a million bottles) run several times a day and end with a tasting. The wines are sweet by modern standards, but the best are genuinely impressive: complex, long-lived, and unlike anything produced in Western Europe. The surrounding estate in the Massandra settlement includes Alexander III's hunting palace, a handsome building open for separate visits.