A few hours after the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia, the winery of Prince Trubetskoy, the vineyards and the entire territory were under occupation. This is the third war that the chateau is going through.

The historical chateau named after Prince Trubetsky, located in the Kherson region, is already 126 years old. It survived the First and Second World Wars. The first vineyards were planted at the end of the 19th century. Then a unique place in the Kherson region quickly bore fruit. Winemakers awarded Prince Trubetsky with the first award named after Emperor Alexander III "for the best Russian grape table wine", and three years later - "for exemplary vineyard culture".

Andrey Strelets, managing manager of the winery, told The Village Ukraine about this.

The Kherson village of Vesele, where the winery is located, has been de-occupied today.

Many tourists from all over the world came to the chateau. Prince Trubetskoy winery is the only one of its kind in Ukraine. Anyone who visited the chateau could go down to the cellars, where more than 50,000 bottles of wine were stored. Among them were the historical collections that were gathered for more than a hundred years and showed the wealth of this historic chateau.

The winery suffered a lot, adds the manager. The Russians thoroughly looted the wine collection, which was collected over several generations. They stole seven bottles of wine that had been stored since the beginning of the 20th century, since the time of Prince Trubetskoy.

“The building of the historical chateau and the houses on the territory were damaged. The equipment and furniture of the restaurant, hotel, office, shop were stolen. The Russians completely plundered the collection of wines that had been collected by several generations. They stole seven bottles of wine that had been stored since the beginning of the 20th century, since the time of Prince Trubetskoy. The aged wines also disappeared,” Strelets emphasizes.

The head of the winery says that colleagues in the wine business offered to use their production facilities to continue the production of wines.

“There were proposals from our colleagues to make wine at their wineries, but our vineyard is terroir, a unique area showing unique properties for 120 years. Creating our wines from wine materials, not from our terroir, does not correspond to the philosophy of our winery. We decided that until the liberation of the winery, we will not produce wine at other wineries,” adds Andrey Strelets.

"We dream and we'll restore. Vineyards, building. We are already thinking about rebranding. We plan to attract foreigners to restore our place of strength and wine from the liberated land's vineyards. We dream of seeing our tourists again, drinking wine and secretly - about a party in the chateau in honor of the victory."